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kEN WITH A MISSION. 

n 



CHARLES KINGSLEY. 



MEN WITH A MISSION. 

New Series op Popular Biographies. 



Illustrated. Small Crown 8vo. 
Price Fifty Cents each. 

HENRY MOETON STANLEY. 
CHARLES KINGSLEY. 
HUGH LATIMER. 
WILLIAM TYNDALE. 

In Preparation. 
JOHN HOWARD. 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
LORD LAWRENCE. 
DAVID LIVINGSTONE. 



MEN WITH A MISSION. 



Charles 



LIBRARY 
APR 13 1891 



BY 



REV. JAMES J. ELLIS, 

AUTHOR OF 

HENRY MORTON STANLEY," "jOHN WILLIAMS," "HARNESS FOR A PAIR, 

ETC. ETC. 



" 1 should advise a constant use of the biography of good men, their 
ID ward feelings, prayers, &c." — Dr. Arnold. 

" Faith in the God Triune, the God-made man. 

Sole light wherein I walk, and walking burn ; 

And they that walk with me, shall bum like me. 

By faith." 

— Legends of St. Patrick. 



NEW YORK: 

THOMAS WHITTAKER, 

2 & 3 Bible House. 



^ 






PRINTED IN ENGLAND. 



PREFACE. 



Charles Kingsley was pre-eminently a man with 
a mission, and a mission that he discharged most 
efficiently. He was the prophet of the present life, 
and as such he endeavoured to show how near and 
beautiful God is to those who will look for Him. 
His was the teaching of the Psalmist : '^ The earth 
is full of the glory of the Lord : the earth is the 
Lord's, and the fulness thereof." 

And Kingsley endeavoured also to correct the 
monkish superstition which makes piety synony- 
mous with asceticism. '' Who ever heard of a fat 
saint ? " asked a recent speaker. The well-being 
of the soul has indeed been too often associated 
with the ill-being of the body, and many pursuits 
and pastimes have been branded too readily as sinful. 
Muscular Christianity will never be popular except 
amongst muscular men ; but the healthier view that 



vi PREFACE. 

prevails witli regard to cricket and other sports is 
largely to be attributed to Kingsley's influence. 

His influence upon the Christian Church was not 
wholly good, but, taken altogether, it will, we think, 
be found that Charles Kingsley was a man of God 
who lived and laboured for men. 

HAEKiNGAr, London, N., July 1890. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

LOST IN THE WILDERNESS; OR, THROUGH 
THICKET AND TANGLE. 

PAGES 

"MAKING PEOPLE STAEE " — "HIS PALLOR IS HIS 
BEAUTY " — A DREADFUL OBJECT - LESSON— THE 
MAN WHO DID MAKE MISTAKES— COLD MUTTON 
* AND HERESY— INTO THE RANKS AT LAST . . I-13 

CHAPTEH II. 

THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS; OR, ESAU ALSO 
A BROTHER. 

THE BEST FOR HIM— WORKING WHILE WAITING— A 
BROTHER, AND THEREFORE A HELPER— THE IRON 
THAT DEFLECTED THE NEEDLE— A BIRTH AND 
HONOURS — THE GOSPEL OF WORK — CHILDREN OF 
GOD, AND THEREFORE SALVABLE .... I4-20 

CHAPTER III. 

BLAZING A PATH; OR, SHOWING TO OTHERS 
THE WAY HOME. 

FILLING UP A GAP WITH LEAVES — A CANDID FRIEND 
— ** ONLY A BARKER " — THOMAS COOPER — "YEAST " 
— BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS — INVA- 

( LIDED— AT WORK AGAIN 2 1 -32 



viii CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MODERN CRUSADER; OR, THE VIKING OF A 

NEW AGE. 

PAGES 

WORK ! WORK ! WORK !— ONE ENEMY AFTER ANOTHER 
— MISUNDERSTOOD, AND THEREFORE HATED — THE 
GOSPEL OF SOAP AND WATER — ASSAILED IN THE 
HOUSE OF HIS FRIENDS— EXHAUSTED, BUT NOT 
BEATEN 33-40 

CHAPTEK Y. 

THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE; OR, THE APOSTLE 
TO THE OUTCASTS. 

MAKING ALLOWANCES— THE SACRED SABBATH— CON- 
STRAINED TO SPEAK — "HYPATIA" — NOT UPON 
THE FATHERS, BUT UPON CHRIST— MORE LIGHT 
BEYOND ... ... . 41-48 

CHAPTER VI. 

STRIFE ABROAD, BUT PEACE AT HOME. 

THE CRIMEAN BLUNDERS AND SUFFERINGS— TEACHING 
THE NEGLECTED — WE ARE PENCILS — AT HOME A 
KING— MARRIAGE NOT FOR THIS LIFE ALONE . 49-58 

CHAPTER VII. 

MISUNDERSTOOD; OR, DIFFERENT, AND THERE- 
FORE WRONG. 

CONVERTED BY FEAR— SUFFERING FOR FAITHFULNESS 
— INDIAN MUTINY AND ITS HORRORS — THE CHIL- 
DREN IN DANGER— PREACHING BEFORE PRINCES 
—THE INEQUALITIES OF LIFE . . . . Cf^ ^ 1 



CONTENTS. ix 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT; OR, NO PEACE 

HERE. 

PAGES 

APPOINTED PROFESSOR— DEATH OF HIS FATHER— IS 
PRAYER OF ANY AVAIL ?— WATCHED WITH RAT'S 
EYES— DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT— SCIENCE NOT 
OPPOSED TO THE BIBLE 65-72 

CHAPTER IX. 

'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 

"THRASH THEM WELL "—CONTROVERSY AVITH NEW- 
MAN-VISIT TO SPAIN— THE TWO REVELATIONS— 
THE FRANCO-GERMAN WAR— ATTACKED AGAIN . 73-8 1 

CHAPTER X. 

APPRECIATED TOO LATE; OR, TRUE AFTER ALL. 

CANON OF CHESTER— TAKING ROOT ONCE MORE—" ALL 
OVER BUT THE SHOUTING ! "—LAST WORDS— INTO 
NEW AND HIGHER SERVICE 82-88 

CHAPTER XI. 

DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 

HERO-WORSHIP— GOOD IN THE WORST AND BAD IN 
THE BEST OF MEN— KINGSLEY'S FAULTS OF DE- 
FECT CHIEFLY— HIS INFLUENCE LIKELY TO LAST 89-IO3 



CHARLES KINGSLEY. 



CHAPTER I. 

LOST IN THE WILDERNESS,' OR, THROUGH 
THICKET AND TANGLE, 

" God had destined to do more 
Through him than through an armed power. 
God gave him reverence of laws, 
Yet stirring blood in freedom's cause, 
A spirit to the rocks akin, 
The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein." 

^— COLEEIDGE. 



"MAKING PEOPLE STARE "—" HIS PALLOR IS HIS BEAUTY " 
—A DREADFUL OBJECT-LESSON— THE MAN WHO DID 
MAKE MISTAKES— COLD MUTTON AND HERESY— INTO 
THE RANKS AT LAST. 

" There is in human nature," said Dr Johnson, 
" a general inclination to make people stare, and 
every wise man has to cure himself of it, and he 
does cure himself. If you wish to make p©<5ple 
stare by doing better than others, why, make them 
stare until they stare their eyes out ! But consider 
how easy it is to make people stare by being 

A 



2 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

absurd. I may do it by going into a drawing- 
room without my shoes. " Which witness is still true, 
and the counsel is requisite even for this genera- 
tion ; nor is the liking for admiration which is the 
secret of this longing to make others stare alto- 
gether wrong. For a man who does not regard the 
opinions of others is wholly lost to good, and praise 
and blame are signposts upon the right way of life. 
It is, therefore, no fault of the subject of this 
sketch that he possessed in a very remarkable 
degree this stare- compelling power of the better 
kind ; he was hated, resisted, excommunicated by 
many, but Charles Kingsley could not be ignored. 
For good or for evil, his influence is still powerful 
amongst us, and in his own way he certainly ful- 
filled a mission which subserves the grand purpose 
of Christ. His magnificent mental accomplish- 
ments, his original gifts of thought and of expres- 
sion, mark him as a unique man among the many 
great men of this age. Miss Jewsbury said of her 
friend Jane Welsh Carlyle, that she could construct 
a story about a broom-handle, and that, further, 
she could render the narrative interesting. Which 
faculty, while it is largely a feminine accomplish- 
ment and monopoly, is to some extent an essential 
for all efiective teaching. For dulness is not a 
quality of truth, but is rather the mixture of alloy 
which an unskilful workman has blended with the 
fine gold, ^r, to change the figure, all real teach- 
ing is like water, inviting, clear, and refreshing 



LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 3 

just in proportion as it is pure. /^ is, therefore, a 
mark of mental and spiritual poverty when our 
testimony fails to attract) Charles Kingsley pos- 
sessed a diction which was undoubtedly a part of 
his endowment, and it enabled him to set his mes- 
sage to such music that it became a pleasant song 
to those who heard it. While, strictly speaking, 
the prophet is distinct from his message, yet it is 
also true that the peculiarities and excellences of 
the lamp are the work of the Fountain of Light, and 
are therefore to be considered as His gift. The 
influence of Charles Kingsley upon the age can 
only be estimated correctly when we understand 
what he was in himself, for he in his excellences 
was given to subserve the interests of the Gospel. 

It is always needful in considering a life to bear 
strongly in mind the important influence that is 
exerted upon character by things that are wholly 
beyond human control and choice. Thus it is already 
a call from God to holiness when a man is born of pious 
parents whose ambition it is that he should excel 
them in Christian service, while it is an additional 
difficulty when strength must be exerted in removing 
. the dead weight of an evil training before ascending 
the mountains. Both sets of conditions are arranged 
by God, and of course with unerring wisdom. 

In the case of Charles Kingsley, he started in 
life under highly favourable circumstances, for the 
blood of a line of soldiers mingled in his veins with 
that of a family that had been distinguished for 



4 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

travel and scientific attainments, while in his case it 

was also an advantage, probably, that he was born 

in a parsonage. For, account for it how one may, 

it is a fact that many sons of unknown ministers 

have been famous and useful. In a parsonage, 

therefore, upon the I2th of July 1819, Charles 

Kingsley was born. His father, the elder of that 

name, had entered the Church at the age of thirty, 

without relinquishing the tastes and habits of a 

country gentleman of his time. At the time of his 

son's birth, Charles Kingsley was curate in charge 

at Holne, a village upon the verge of Dartmoor. 

^t goes without saying that the curate was no 

/ ordinary man, for no genius is ever born of dull 

( parents, any more than peaches are yielded by a 

) stinging-nettle. In the case of Charles Kingsley, 

f junior, favourable circumstances developed and ex- 
hibited the talents that were hidden in his father, 
just as a statue is admired when placed upon an 
; appropriate pedestal, although its merits had been 
^ unnoticed in a village workshop. From his father, 
'"Charles Kingsley the younger inherited a love for 
manly sports, and a craving for arduous exertions 
which were indeed requisite for an iron constitu- 
tion such as he possessed. From his father, too, 
he inherited the seeing ey6 that so quickly detected 
the beauties of nature, while the stories of peril and 
of adventure that he heard from his maternal 
grandfather inspired and strengthened his daring 
spirit. Although all through his life Charles 



LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 5 

Kingsley felt an intense affection for the West 
Country, his earliest years were spent in another 
part of England. The child was only six weeks old 
when his father *removed to Barnack Kectory, in the 
Fens, to which place he had been appointed as a 
place-holder for the Bishop's son. There the boy 
grew up amidst such surroundings as have now 
departed for ever. Then the Fens were still 
a distinct country, which was inhabited by a race 
who were quite unlike other English folk; but in 
spite of its ague and other discomforts the great Fen 
was even then very delightful and charming. No- 
where in the British Isles could such glorious sunsets 
be seen, and during Kingsley's boyhood the Fen 
abounded in game, and iu varieties of life that are 
now extinct. " The landscape painter," says Con- 
stable, " must walk in the field with a humble 
mind. No arrogant man was ever permitted to 
see nature in all her beauty ; " and the same is true 
of others as much as of artists. The boy's mind 
was occupied from his infancy with the characters 
of the alphabet by which God spells out His 
wisdom, power, and love to men. Then Charles 
Kingsley learned that while this world is imper- 
fect and stained, yet it is God's world still, and 
may be made a vestibule of heaven. His father 
took the boy abroad whenever he went shooting, and 
the child's quick eye and sensitive nature thrilled 
to the sights and sounds that are a manifestation of 
God to the devout heart. 



6 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

" Nature all, 
Wears to the lover's eye a look of love, 
But to the wicked, lours 
As with avenging thunder. " 

Charles Kingsley's mind came to maturity early, 
and at tlie age of four years lie began to preach, 
and even to write poetry. Some of these childish 
productions were secretly taken down by his mother, 
who was assured by her friends that her boy would 
certainly become no ordinary man. 

But the Divine Wisdom, that moves and shifts 
men so as to fulfil by them His gracious designs, 
transferred Charles Kingsley at the age of eleven 
years to the fair county of Devonshire. His father 
in the year 1830 was appointed rector of Clovelly, 
and there, with his wife, he found a most congenial 
home. Unlike Lord Beaconsfield (of whom his wife 
is said to have remarked to a painter, " Eemember 
that his pallor is his beauty"), Charles Kingsley, 
senior, possessed the physical development and 
strength that the Devonshire fishermen could readily 
appreciate and admire. There was certainly no 
pallor whatever about him, and the fact' that he 
could match any of his flock at their own fishing 
pursuits, was a bond between them and an advantage 
which he wisely employed for their spiritual im- 
provement. They soon loved and obeyed him, as 
only West Country folk can love, and for them 
Charles Kingsley acquired a liking which was never 
eradicated from his nature. Only for a few months. 



LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 7 

however, was Charles Kingsley, junior, permitted 
to enjoy the charms of Clovelly, and then he was 
sent away from home to school at Clifton. The 
charming Downs, the Nightingale Valley, the Staple- 
ton Dell, and the many other beautiful surroundings 
of Bristol were treasuries of natural history to him, 
and, as all intelligent boys must in similar circum- 
stances, he became an ardent geologist, and searched 
with delight the magniificent section of rock beneath 
the Bridge. There every formation, from the Old 
Red Sandstone right up to the Carboniferous lime- 
stone, is exposed, and waiting to be studied. 

But a far more terrible lesson than any that the 
rocks yielded was now appointed for his education, 
for during Charles Kingsley's school-days at Clifton 
the Bristol riots ensued. Owing to the timidity and 
cowardice of the authorities, a furious mob wrecked 
and destroyed the city unchecked, and the huge 
cauldron of flaming ruin was a spectacle that the 
boy never forgot. At that period all Europe was 
agitated by volcanic forces that muttered below 
the surface ; it was as well for Kingsley's future 
usefulness that he thus early learned to appreciate 
the magnitude of the danger which threatened the 
established order of things. His timid, shrinking 
nature, morbidly sensitive as it had been, was 
transformed at the revelation, and the boy felt a 
new-born courage arise within him, which in after- 
years enabled him to grapple with Chartism and 
infidelity with success. From Clifton, Charles 



8 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

Kingsley was sent on to Helston, and there the 
friendship and influence of one of his tutors deepened 
and directed his love for nature. It is probably from 
the want of the seeing eye that men malign and miss 
the beauty of God's fair world, for it is true that — 

" This earth is cramm'd with heaven, 
And every common hush afire with God, 
Had we hut eyes to see it." 

Yet his courage was not small, as when, for example, 
he applied a red-hot poker to a wounded finger, 
and endured the torture without flinching. A per- 
haps less noticeable act was when he climbed a tree 
in order to rob a hawk's nest. More than once this 
was done with impunity, and when the bird avenged 
itself upon the intruder's hand, without losing his 
self-control Charles Kingsley calmly descended the 
tree in order to have his wounds dressed. 

In the year 1836a further stage in his pilgrim- 
age was reached, for then his father removed to 
Chelsea, in London. Although not then what it 
is now, Chelsea presented an utter and an unfavour- 
able contrast to Clovelly. Yet, here, for the first 
time in his life, Charles Kingsley became acquainted 
with the awful squalor and vice of our great cities. 
He had during the two years of his residence here 
but few amusements, and he therefore found delight 
in the poets, with the chief of whom he became 
well acquainted, probably no man ever became a 
successful author without a knowledge of poetry, 



LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. g 

wMcli is tliat upon which other colours are deposited 
in order to form the picture!) Ruskin, in his dog- 
matic, conceited style, remarks of his own childhood, 
" It was extremely unusual with me to make a 
mistake at all," which, if ever true, is certainly not 
so now. Kingsley was far too wise a man to ever 
make such a claim. He, as all men do, make mis- 
takes, just as a child stumbles in its attempts to 
walk and to gauge distances. Yet the child by 
its very mistakes learns how to stand steadily upon 
the earth and to move about upon it. 

During this period of transition from youth to 
manhood Kingsley walked daily backwards and for- 
wards from his home to King's College, London, in 
order to study. In the year 1838 he went up to 
Cambridge. By sheer talent he acquired eminence 
here ; for genius in his case compensated for his want 
of previous application. But during this term of 
study his mind was terribly distressed by religious 
doubts ; a correct portrait of himself at this period 
of his life is probably given in " Yeast." Although 
it is not necessary for a man to verify the compass 
every day, yet every man must learn for himself 
the solid facts upon which our hopes of redemption 
rest, and the process is often a terrible agony. 
Ruskin, it is true, attributes the fact that he did 
not become a clergyman to the disgust which he 
conceived for evangelical religion, from the fact 
that his doubtless much-tried aunt gave him cold 
mutton instead of hot meat for dinner. Probably 



lo MEN WITH A MISSION. 

mucli so-called honest doubt is of the same un- 
reasonable nature. But with Charles Kingsley it 
was not so ; he really desired to know the truth 
and to be right with God, and this could not easily 
be. An eccentric clergyman who once lived in the 
West of England devoutly believed that a bucket 
of cold water hurled over his children immediately 
after they left their beds in the morning was highly 
conducive to their health ; certainly mental and 
spiritual health is promoted by the cold bath which 
all must suffer. The shock which Kingsley at first 
felt at the cold bath was terrible; the faith which 
he had received upon parental authority he now 
longed to be able to rest upon solid fact, and the 
dash of cold water was therefore an agony. Unable 
to really rest upon the inviting promises and com- 
plete atonement of the Gospel, he endeavoured to 
drown thought, and by excitement and the pursuit 
of pleasure in sport to still the awful cravings for 
satisfaction that stirred within him : — 

" Poor man ! 

Ashamed to ask, and yet he needed help ! 

Proof this beyond all lingering of doubt 

That not with natural or mental wealth 

Is God delighted and His peace secured, 

That not in natural or mental wealth 

Is human happiness or grandeur found. 

Attempt how monstrous and how surely vain ! I 

With things of earthly sort, with aught but God, 1 

With aught but moral excellence, truth, and love, 

To satisfy and fill the immortal soul ! " ^ 

1 Pollock. 



LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. ii 

It was no wonder that Charles Kingsley so doubted 
and suffered, for society at that time was in a con- 
dition of agitation and unrest. The Oxford Tracts 
acted as powerful solvents upon many men, and 
although Charles Kingsley was startled at their ten- 
dency, yet to some extent he was influenced by them 
at the time. They were positive and earnest, and 
therefore they were read, and in his case at least 
they added another discordant element to the mental 
chaos which at length yielded to the voice that com- 
manded light and order in the natural world. 

Yet Charles Kingsley did not attain certainty by 
the method that he anticipated, for very seldom does 
any heart find rest by reasoning. He was brought 
into loving contact with Christ in another life, and 
although unsolved, his doubts ceased to perplex him. 
In the year 1839 it fell out, in the providence of 
God, that he met with a lady whom he loved at 
first sight, and who afterwards became his wife. 
His soul awoke under the sunshine of love, and this 
lady's faith in God helped to fix his. In the agony 
of his despair Charles Kingsley had almost resolved 
to leave England and to emigrate to America, but 
now a new meaning and force had come into his 
life :— 

" It comes, the beautiful, the free, 

The crown of all humanity, 

In silence, and alone, 

To seek the appointed one. 

" O weary heart ! slumbering eyes ! 
O drooping souls whose destinies 



12 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

Are frauglit with fear and pain, 
Ye shall be loved again ! " 

Gradually Charles Kingsley came to a knowledge 
of Christ, and in His vicarious atonement his soul 
found that for which it had craved so long. As a 
consequence of his new hopes and resolutions, Charles 
Kingsley resolved to enter the Church rather than 
to go to the Bar, as he had once intended, and 
in July 1832 he became curate at Eversley. This 
hamlet, with which his name is historically asso- 
ciated, stands in the midst of a stretch of breezy 
heathland, which is fragrant with the odour of fir 
forests all the year round, and in summer is rich 
in the golden bloom of the broom-plant. 

The people of this charming village had been 
shamefully neglected by the preceding clergyman, 
and as a natural consequence they were inclined 
both to intemperance and poaching. Kingsley took 
things as he found them, and endeavoured to adapt 
himself to the conditions of the place. In this he 
followed Dr. Johnson's advice, who, when a friend 
complained to him that in the county where he 
lived all men talked of nothing but of oxen, replied 
— " Then, sir, I would talk of oxen also." 

Charles Kingsley first made himself a friend of 
his people ; he talked of oxen to them, and as a 
result he lived to see an immense improvement in 
their habits and condition. The church at Eversley 
in which he laboured for thirty- three years was 
restored in the year 1876 at a cost of ;^I200 as a 



LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. 13 

memorial of him. It is described as being "a brick 
edifice of no particular character, and the ruddy 
tiles of the high pitched roof have a singularly un- 
ecclesiastical appearance. The nave and aisles are 
of equal proportions, and they are divided by square 
whitewashed pillars, with substantial arches between 
them." 

Thus we see Charles Kino^slev at last settled 
down to his life-work ; the great proportions of 
which he did not at the time at all foresee, but 
which was precisely the very best form of service 
that he could render, both for himself and for the 
world. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS; OR, ESAU 
ALSO A BROTHER. 

" Patience and abnegation of self and devotion unto others, 
This was the lesson that a life of sorrow and trial had taught him ; 
So was his love diffused, but, like some odorous spices, 
Suffered no waste nor loss though filling the air with aroma." 

— Longfellow. 

" Those things should we regard with fear 
Which bring misfortune on another's head." 

— Dante. 

*'God can write straight in crooked lines." 

— POETUGUESE PeOVEEB. 



THE BEST FOR HIM— WORKING WHILE WAITING— A BROTHER, 
AND THEREFORE A HELPER— THE IRON THAT DEFLECTED 
THE NEEDLE — A BIRTH AND HONOURS — THE GOSPEL OF 
WORK— CHILDREN OF GOD, AND THEREFORE SALVABLE. 

^' There is some one state of character and plan of 
action," said John Foster, " whicii is the very best 
for me, when all the circumstances of my age, 
measure of mental abilities, and the means within 
my reach are considered." This is certainly true of ( 
every man, and therefore only when he is himself, 
and attempts to perform his own peculiar work, is a 
\ man as useful as he may be. Then is he seen at 

14 



THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS. 15 

his best, like a sailor at sea, and then his own 
peculiar faculties are able to exert their full force. 
Charles Kingsley was at his best at Eversley, and 
from no other district could he, probably, have 
exerted so large an influence upon the mind and 
life of his time. 

Dean Stanley, in his funeral sermon on Charles 
Kingsley, said that " he was far beyond what falls 
to the lot of most J alive in every pore to the heaidy, 
the marvels of nature ; " and to every sense the 
teachings of the outdoor gospel were directed in 
his country charge. His sporting instincts and his 
love for soldiers enabled him to win the confidence 
of both classes, who admired his English directness 
and common-sense. His soldierly daring and devo- 
tion to duty as he knew it, impelled him to make 
efibrts for the mental and spiritual improvement 
of classes who are generally regarded as somewhat 
outside the Church of Christ. His mind, too, was 
of an eagle-type, and swooped directly upon what 
it aimed at ; for Kingsley was not a man to hesitate 
or to delay. In him there was very little of the 
amusing folly of which General Grant speaks in 
his memoirs. An officer in the Federal army once 
held two posts, and in one capacity he made a 
requisition upon himself in another capacity. This 
requisition he resisted, urged, and again refused, 
and so he continued waging a wordy war of argu- 
ment with himself, thus wasting both his time and 
strength. To a man like Kingsley such folly was a 



i6 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

moral impossibility ; lie first made up his mind as to 
what was his duty, and then he attempted to do it. 
(T But not without suffering, for indeed no good 
\ thing is ever accomplished in this world without 
i^ain and anguish. Solomon tells us that it is good 
for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth, and 
experience proves that by the drilling and discipline 
of defeat men learn how to conquer. To Kingsley 
the pain of doubt gave place to a severer pang, for 
during twelve months he was separated from the 
lady to whom he had given his heart's love. He 
was loyal to his troth, however, and he humbly 
accepted the tribulation as intended for his own 
good, as it certainly was. He was also far too wise 
a man to waste his time in vain regrets; he there- 
fore worked diligently at Eversley, waiting until the 
cloud should lift, as lift it eventually did. Mathews 
tells us of a biography that he had seen in MS. 
which filled three handsomely bound volumes. They 
related the memorabilia of a life of nearly forty years, 
and they were mainly occupied with such items as 
coach-fare and the cost and items of the dinners 
that had been consumed during that period ! Such 
existence is fearfully common ; the biographies of 
such men would be like that of a cabbage or of a 
rabbit, a mere consuming of the product of other 
lives without rendering any adequate return. 

Charles Kingsley, however, was pre-eminently a 
worker, and his first care was about the country 
labourers and farmers among whom his lot was cast. 



THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS. 17 

' Probably the best portion of his life cannot be written, 
because it will not be known until the day of God shall 
declare it ; for no one can tell how many hearts were 
lightened and comforted by him without his knowing 
it. After a year of such quiet work he began to find 
that his hopes and waiting were not in vain, and at 
the end of the year 1843 he was engaged to be mar- 
ried. He also received a promise of a small living, 
and accordingly he left Eversley, and in January 
1844 he was married to Fanny Grenfell. About 
this time the rector of Eversley absconded, and the 
parishioners endeavoured to secure Charles Kingsley 
as their future pastor. The patron acceded to their 
request., and in May 1 844 Charles Kingsley brought 
his wife to Eversley. Of course, his difficulties were 
not necessarily at an end, as is the case in the 
tradition il story, although the bride and bridegroom 
lived happily ever afterwards. Their house had not 
been repaired for nearly a century, for then Dr. 
Jaeger had not fixed that period as the life-limit for 
a dwelling-house. There were arrears of debt also 
wiuch the previous rector had left behind him, and 
these had tc be paid. The house, besides being 
dilapidated, was also very damp and unhealthy, 
and expensive drainage operations were necessary 
before it was fit for habitation. There was no school- 
room in the parish, and practically no school, but 
all these things s^cted upon Kingsley as upon Napier, 
/^who declared that difficulties only made his feet go 
(jieeper into the soil. A schoolmaster was trained 

B 



1 8 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

for his work, and the Eectory was thrown open for 
classes, in which probably the best teaching was the 
insight which was then afforded into Kingsley's own 
earnestness and fidelity. By personal contact with 
his people at his own house and in their own homes 
he put into practice that reverence for the poor and 
that diligence in helping them that he inculcated 
upon others. The sense that the minister is also a 
man, and that, beside his official duty, he has a 
tender sympathy for all the sorrows of his people, < 
probably does far more than anything else to win 
them for Christ. The days of priestly rule have long 
since passed away, and the Christian ministry can 
only exist now, much less prove effective, as it adopts 
the apostolic rule of going from house to house. 

Almost every mind is both a sun and a moon to 
others ; that is, it both receives and it iriparts to 
other minds of the light which each receives :n varying* 
measure from God. Kingsley's ruling spirit was F. 
D. Maurice, whom he called " Master," and whose 
opinions he adopted. It is probably a pity that 
this was so, for Kingsley's love for Maurice in- 
duced him to follow his leader into some of the 
vagaries into which Maurice wandered. Kingsley 
undoubtedly loved Christ and believed in His 
vicarious atonement, but his views upon the Sabbath 
and upon the future state are not, in the opinion 
of the writer, those that are taught in Scripture. 
Further reference will be made to this later on 
in this sketch, but it is needful here to note the 



THE WILD MAN OF THE WOODS. 19 

masfnetic influence that deflected the needle in 
Kingsley's moral compass. 

In the year 1845 Charles Kingsley received his 
- first preferment, for he was made Honorary Canon 
of Middleham in that year. Neither duties nor 
emolument were attached to this office, but the title 
was valued by Kingsley on account of its historic 
interest. 

His home was gladdened about this period by the 
birth of a daughter in the year 1846, and in the 
following year his family was still further increased 
by the birth of a son. The joy which followed this 
event found expression in many ballads which were 
written during a holiday that he spent in 1847 by 
the seaside. These were, however, merely the relief- 
valves of his exuberant emotions ; his first real lite- 
rary work was finished during the same summer- 
time. It was a Life of St. Elizabeth, which biography, 
while relating the heroine's story, discussed the 
^ great problems and questions of that day. The 
office of the biographer and historian is not only 
to relate, but also to apply ; not only to arrange an 
elegant bouquet, but to distil and to prescribe the 
medicines which the sicknesses of men require. 
The past is only of interest and of use to us as 
it is seen to be an exhibition of the results of 
principles which are working within and around us 
to-day. 

The book at once attracted attention ; it was 
timely, and many of the youth in the universities 



20 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

were fortified by it against tlie Eomanising influences 
which were then dominant. The ascetic life has 
always been attractive to some minds, for one reason 
perhaps because it enables a man to earn heaven ; 
but monachism is always an evil both to the in- 
dividual and to the Church. The Gospel of Work 
is the Gospel of the devout life, and the field is the 
world ; that is, among the unbelieving, sufiering 
children of men. These Esaus are loved by God, 
and may be brought within the range of His saving 
grace. And, in one sense, it is true that — 

" All men on earth tlie children are 
Of Him who keeps them here in fosterage : 
They see not yet His face ; but He sees them, 
Yea, and decrees their seasons and their times : 
Like infants, they must learn them first by touch, 
Through Nature and her gifts — by hearing next. 
The hearing of the ear, and that is faith — 
By vision last. 

Upon this first sonship rests the possibility of the 
second birth, by which they are made joint-heirs 
with Christ. 



CHAPTER III. 

BLAZING A PATH J OR, SHOWING TO OTHERS 
THE WAY HOME. 

" Ye are brothers, ye are men ; 
We conquer but to save." — Campbell. 

*' A saint is a glorified failure, you know I " — Teench. 

" His favourite expression was, ' The bitterest of all griefs is 
to see misery, and yet not to be able to do anything ; ' and it might 
stand as the motto of his whole mind, as it was often before his 
life." — Said of De. Aenold. 



FILLING UP A GAP WITH LEAVES— A CANDID FRIEND— 
" ONLY A BARKER "—THOMAS COOPER—" YEAST " — BURN- 
ING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS— INVALIDED— AT WORK 
AGAIN. 

It is related of a titled lady, whose house was 
situated upon the verge of a cliff which looked over 
the sea, that she desired to have the chasm jSlled 
up. For this purpose her gardeners were directed 
to throw the cuttings from the lawns and the 
sweepings from the garden- walks over the cliff, 
and the lady herself occupied her leisure by throw- 
ing any trifles such as dead leaves into the gulf 
below. Of course, this labour had no perceptible 
influence in filling up the chasm ; it was simply 

2X 



22 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

labour in vain. In mucli the same spirit men 
have been accustomed to deal with the yawning 
gulfs that separate society and produce misery, 
but, for all their well-meaning efforts, the chasm 
still is not the less deep. Now and then the leaves 
and grass-mowings are swept away by a whirlwind, 
and then the abyss appears. Such a tempest came 
in the year 1848, when Europe was astounded at 
the revelations which were made of its dreadful 
misery. The events of that year were such as 
brought Kingsley prominently to the front and 
showed him to be a born leader of men. He 
threw himself into the educational movement which 
sought to prepare the working classes for liberty, and 
also into the Chartist agitation, that brought him into 
touch, not only with the leaders of the working 
classes, but also with those who sympathised with 
them. He left his parish work and came to London 
to endeavour, if possible, to allay the rancour of the 
contending and opposite parties, and to fit the 
Chartists for the rights which they demanded. He 
was a very candid friend to them, however, point- 
ing out to them what he considered to be great 
faults in their programme and society. The plea 
for political liberty had become associated with 
French infidelity and french books, with a small 
and dirty " f." Although this was probably owing 
to the persistent opposition which the privileged 
classes had offered to the suggested and necessary 
reforms, its effect was incalculably harmful all 



BLAZING A PATH. 23 

round. A paper was started by Kingsley and his 
friends avowedly for the purpose of enlightening 
the working classes, and large placards were issued, 
which in terse, clear phrase showed both the merits 
of the cause and its defects. The scorn and 
obloquy which this entailed upon Kingsley were 
not more than might have been anticipated from 
the strength of the evils that he assailed. It is 
said that, when Cobden made his maiden speech 
in the House of Commons, Horace Twiss of the 
Times said, " There is nothing in him ; he is only 
a Ijarker." No one could say that Kingsley was 
only a barker ; he certainly had teeth, and he knew 
how to use them with terrible efiect. No small 
part of the opposition which he had to encounter 
came from his relatives, who regarded the probable 
consequences to himself and his family of such 
plain speaking with considerable alarm, (^ut he 
could not be induced to act a lie by being silent 
when he felt it to be his duty to speak outj) Pro- 
bably Kingsley was of Latimer's opinion, who in 
his letter to King Henry the Eighth endorses 
what "that holy man St. John Chrysostom saith 
— that he is not only a traitor to the truth which 
openly for truth teaches a lie, but he also which 
doth not freely pronounce, and show the truth 
which he knoweth." It is indeed a crime both 
against God and man when a needful testimony 
is withheld by a witness into whose heart it has 
• been given for speech. This Kingsley certainly 



24 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

did not do at any part of his life, for he uttered 
with all his might all that he himself knew as 
truth. 

One triumph he certainly secured by this fearless 
speaking out of the Divine message, and that was in 
the conversion of Thomas Cooper, who was at that 
time one of the ablest advocates of infidelitr and 
of Chartism. Kingsley somehow secured Thomas 
Cooper's friendship, and gently and tenderly he led 
him into faith in Christ. After his conveision 
Thomas Cooper dedicated, his life to the service of 
the faith that he had once destroyed, and with 
signal success. May not his usefulness be re- 
garded as a secondary triumph of Kingsley's 
efforts ? 

This Thomas Cooper was a remarkable man ; in- 
deed he was probably one of the most powerful 
stimulative thinkers and pioneers that has ever 
arisen in the land. He was born to poverty, and 
only secured for himself an education by dint of 
self-denial and gigantic efforts. While in the 
receipt of ten shillings per week, as a journeyman 
shoemaker (upon which pittance he and his aged 
mother subsisted), Thomas Cooper taught himself 
Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German. His 
constitution at lenp-th broke down under the severe 

o 

strain to which he subjected it during these studies, 
and then Thomas Cooper turned his attention to 
teaching. After a variety of vicissitudes, he found 
himself present at a Chartist meeting in Leicester. 



BLAZING A PATH. 25 

He had come there in order to report on behalf of 
a newspaper with which he was connected, but his 
warm heart was lacerated by the tidings of sorrow 
that he then heard. He found that the poor 
stocking -makers earned only at the most four 
shillings and sixpence per week, and sometimes not 
even that amount. The natural effect of this hope- 
less toil was the enfeeblement of mind and body, 
the poor creatures became too much dispirited to 
even complain about the degradation and misery that 
was their daily portion, and they ceased to struggle 
against it. They had but few friends, for most 
people viewed such conditions as a part of the bene- 
ficent plan of Providence, or else they shut their 
ears and hearts to the voice of pity. Cooper could 
not do this ; he not only pitied the poor dumb 
sufferers, but he immediately gave himself to the 
work of alleviating their distress. In order to 
accomplish this Thomas Cooper surrendered the 
small pittance which was his only income, and he 
threw himself heart and soul into a movement that 
he almost solely originated in their behalf The 
Whig Government of the day, doubtless with the 
best possible intentions, contrived to impress the 
poor with the feeling that they would not attempt 
any relief for the distress that the Ministers ignored. 
The irritating behaviour of the Government, who had 
no better remedies for starving men than imprison- 
ment and massacre, made Cooper and those who 
rallied around him desperate, and what selfish 



26 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

politicians desired for base purposes of their own 
ensued. The populace created a riot, and ostensibly 
for their supposed sedition and complicity in this 
rioting Cooper and other leaders of the people were 
sent to prison. The story of his own life, from 
which the above facts are gleaned, is a book which 
will richly repay study, for it casts a light not only 
upon the sufferings of a patriot, but upon the blind 
and selfish folly of some of those who were then in 
power. 

" I cannot avoid throwing my whole nature into 
an undertaking when I once enter upon it, either 
from a sense of duty or for self-gratification," says 
Mr. Cooper in his autobiography. Accordingly, in 
spite of the risk that he thereby incurred of 
another term of imprisonment, he persisted in 
his efforts, and soon became a recognised leader 
of the working-classes. He had in his early 
manhood been a devout Christian. *' Often," he 
says, " for several days together I felt close to 
the Almighty; felt that I was His own and His 
entirely." The harsh conduct of his minister drove 
Thomas Cooper from the Methodist body, with which 
he had been connected, and among whom he had 
been a successful local preacher. The hopeless 
misery, also, that he saw in the world still further 
distressed and puzzled him, as it has perplexed 
many another man before him. For, explain it as 
we may, it is still a fact that there are many pro- 
found mysteries in God's government of the world, 



BLAZING A PATH. 27 

and there are many facts tliat appear to clash with 
His mercy and justice. Of course, they only a]p]oear 
to do so, for eventually they will be found to be the 
modes of mercy, that only require time in order to 
be seen in their beauty. These things, however, 
pained Cooper, and the behaviour of Christian people 
deepened the doubts that were lurking within him, 
and in due time he lost his faith in Christ. In words 
that are sadly significant he himself asks : " When 
the belief in eternal punishment is given up, the 
eternal demerit of sin has faded from the preacher's 
conscience, and then what consistency can he see in 
the doctrine of Christ's atonement ? " 

Strauss's book on the " Life of Christ " was in 
a great measure the cause of Cooper's wandering 
into infidelity, and he was retailing the opinions of 
Strauss to immense audiences of the working- classes 
when Charles Kingsley made his acquaintance. In 
the volume from which extracts have already been 
given Mr. Cooper says : " Immediately after I had 
obeyed conscience, and told the people I had been 
in the habit of teaching that I had been wrong, I 
determined to open my mind fully to my large- 
hearted friend, Charles Kingsley. He showed the 
fervent sympathy of a brother. He began a corre- 
spondence which extended over many months ; in 
fact, over more than a year. I told him every 
doubt and described every hope I had ; and he coun- 
selled, instructed, and strengthened me to the end." 

Mr. Cooper's friends obtained an introduction 



28 , MEN WITH A MISSION. 

for him to Mr. Cowper, wlio was tlien President of 
the Board of Health. 

" He said he wished much that he could offer me 
anything better, but the only thing he could offer me 
was that I should become a copyist of letters, &c., at a 
low remuneration ; he thought it was seventy words 
a penny. I told him I would take the employ, if 
it were seventy words for a halfpenny. So I went 
down into the cellar of the Board of Health — for 
that is the truest name of the room — and there I 
was almost a daily worker every week for ninety- 
seven weeks, not finally quitting my post till the 
end of May 1858."^ 

Charles Kingsley sympathised much with his 
friend in his drudgery, and he wrote thus to him : 
^' May not our Heavenly Father just be bringing you 
through this seemingly degrading work to give you — 
what it cost me no little sorrow to learn — the power 
of working in harness, — and so actually drawing 
something and being of real use ? Be sure if you 
can once learn that lesson, in addition to the rest 
you have learnt, you will rise to something worthy 
of you yet." ^ 

Thomas Cooper took the advice so graciously 
given to him, and he endured the yoke well. His 
doubts did not depart all at once, nor did he ex- 
pect such an experience. But he was enabled in 
the darkness to keep a firm grasp upon the doc- 

^ " Life of Thomas Cooper." 
2 " Life of Charles Kingsley." 



BLAZING A PATH. 29 

trine of tlie Atonement, and therefore lie eventually 
came into happiness and rest. 

Kingsley stood his friend all through this time 
of agony and change, and he contributed by his 
fervent brotherly affection to the establishment of 
Cooper's faith in Christ. Cooper has gratefully 
acknowledged this Christian conduct on the part 
of Kingsley, and it must not be forgotten that at 
that time Cooper had not attained the honour and 
renown that are now deservedly his. 

" I told my friend Charles Kingsley," he says, 
" in our correspondence, that while I diligently 
read the ' Bridgewater Treatises,' and all the other 
books with which he furnished me as a means of 
beginning to teach sceptics the truth from the very 
foundation, that the foundations themselves seemed 
to glide from under my feet; I had to struggle 
against my own new and tormenting doubts about 
God's existence, and feared I should be at last over- 
whelmed with darkness and confusion of mind. 

" ' No, no ! ' said my faithful and intelligent 
friend, 'you will get out of all doubt in time. 
When you feel you are in the deepest and gloomiest 
doubt, pray the prayer of desperation ; cry out, 
" Lord, if Thou dost exist, let me know that Thou 
dost exist ! Guide my mind by a way that I know 
not into Thy truth ! " and God will deliver you.' " ^ 

God did deliver Thomas Cooper, and that by 
the most unlikely means. The words that he had 
1 '« Life of Thomas Cooper." 



30 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

heard in his childhood when, in Gainsborough 
Church, he had joined in the general confession of 
sin, came back to his memory and delivered him 
from the paralysis of doubt that had prevented him 
from praying, and Thomas Cooper was able to find 
rest in Christ. 

Nor was this a solitary instance of Kingsley's 
ready sympathy for those who were in spiritual 
blindness and distress. It seems, indeed, as if God, 
who formerly had sent Paul to those who were afar ofi*, 
also sent Kingsley in like manner to the Gentiles, if 
so be that he might save some. It is true that in 
many instances the results of Kingsley's sympathy 
and teaching were not so readily evident as they 
were in Cooper's case, but Cooper was only one out 
of many who were attracted by Kingsley's rare 
qualities of heart and intellect, and who were by him 
led from darkness into light. There was abundant 
need for all and more than Kingsley could accom- 
plish, for the social and religious condition of 
England at that period was truly horrible. Kings- 
ley did all that he could, and far more than he 
should have done, if a due regard to his own health 
had influenced him at all. He attempted to 
awaken the upper classes from the selfish torpor in 
which they remained, insensible both to the miseries 
of their fellow-creatures, and to the dangers which 
those miseries, unless checked, must eventually pro- 
duce to all. He did this in a story which received 
the singular title of " Yeast." During the autumn 



BLAZING A PATH. 31 

of this year " Yeast " was passed as a serial 
through Frasers Magazine, and though inferior to 
his subsequent books, it accomplished his purpose. 
Kingsley in it described scenes that his own eyes 
had looked upon, and he attacked real evils that were 
the death of multitudes. He wrote its pages gene- 
rally after a hard day of parish work, a method which 
was fearfully exhaustive to himself, but which im- 
parted the glow and earnestness that make " Yeast " 
still a useful book. Such a book could not but empty 
him of needful energy and vitality ; and, therefore, 
in the fall of the year his health broke down entirely. 
So prostrate was he, that during the following autumn 
and winter he was compelled to take complete rest 
at Ilfracombe. There his receptive wits were not 
idle, for, while exploring the countless treasures of 
the shore, he was slowly dreaming out the story that 
afterwards shaped itself into " Alton Locke." This 
story, as all useful books must do, lay simmering 
in his mind for a long time before it acquired 
definite shape and purpose. 

In the summer of 1 849 he returned to Eversley 
once more, but only to fall again a victim to his 
devotion to his work. During the summer a low 
fever visited the village, and oblivious of the risk 
he ran, Kingsley diligently visited and nursed the 
sufierers ; and with a result that might have been 
anticipated, for after a night of nursing his health 
once more broke down, and he had to return to 
Ilfracombe for rest and complete quiet. 



32 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

In these labours Kingsley was to a large extent a 
pioneer, for then there were very few who even knew 
what was required, mnch less were able to do what 
was needful. His work in many departments was 
to pioneer for others, and in doing so he blazed 
a path by which many wanderers have reached a 
knowledge of Christ. The axe that he employed 
was not a borrowed one, and he struck the trees 
with a personal peculiarity which was all his own, 
but none the less he was a helper of many who, 
humanly speaking, must without him have died 
in the waste. So that men be led into happiness, 
what matter how the guide induces them to take 
the right path ? Yet there were many who, be- 
cause they could not understand Kingsley, suspected 
and assailed him. The true principle is laid down 
for all time in the words of our Lord when He 
said, " He that is not against us is on our part " 
(Mark ix. 40). 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE MODERN CRUSADER; OR, THE VIKING 
OF A NEW AGE. 

" I have told 
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness." 

— Coleridge. 

*' It is only by the repetition of noble acts of self-denial and faith 
that natural character is nerved for high and continuous efforts. " 
— John Fostee. 

*' Christ in Christ-like life expressed, 
This, this, not words, subdues a land to Christ ; 
And in this best apostolate all have part." 

— Legends of St, Patrick. 



WORK ! WOEK ! WORK ! — ONE ENEMY AFTER ANOTHER — 
MISUNDERSTOOD, AND THEREFORE HATED— THE GOSPEL 
OF SOAP AND WATER— ASSAILED IN THE HOUSE OF HIS 
FRIENDS— EXHAUSTED BUT NOT BEATEN. 

" As for bidding me not work," said Sir Walter 
Scott, " Molly might just as well put the kettle 
on the fire and say, ^ Now, don't boil/ " This is the 
true spirit of all the world's workers ; their work 
is a natural and irresistible consequence of what 
they are and are sent to do. To a man, there- 
fore, of Kingsley's combative temperament it was 
utterly impossible not to combat the errors and 

33 C 



34 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

evils whicli he saw around him, and in preaching 
the modern crusade against dirt, cant, and tyranny 
of all kinds his hand was against many a man's, 
and many a man's hand, therefore, was against him. 
This was partly the consequence of his own nervous 
temperament, which could not stay to conciliate, and 
which sometimes made him unjust when calmer 
reason would have prevented the error. To mention 
one instance of many, his picture of Dissenting 
ministers in " Alton Locke " is felt by all impartial 
men to be manifestly unjust and untrue ; in this 
case the fault was rather from want of thought 
than from malice prepense. Another example is 
his treatment of the Free-traders, who are now 
admitted to have rendered a most valuable service 
to the nation. But these blemishes, while they 
should not be omitted in a faithful portrait, be- 
cause they were in the man, are counterbalanced 
by the sterling excellence of his character and 
work. The gospel of soap and water required to 
be preached, and men needed to be reminded that 
this life has a present importance and may be happy 
in greater measure than it is. Many excellent men 
had settled down into a kind of fatalism which 
regarded disease wholly as the visitation of God, 
and not as also the penalty for violating His laws. 
And in thinking of such men as Kingsley, it must 
be admitted that there is a section of the Evangelical 
school which is extremely narrow and self-conceited. 
1 All light does not come through the same window, 



THE MODERN. eRVSADER. v 7; 

( LIBRARY^ ■ 

and it is possible tliat a 
view of truth without 




ttlffiy 



3ur 
i,' ien 
and a heretic. But eveVy}$Ja}i^lLlP*.y4fflS!S£*ives 
to fulfil the mission that God has entrusted to him 
does so at the expense of fighting, for the dragon 
will not relinquish his captives without a struggle. 

The year 1850 was pre-eminently a year of battle 
with Charles Kingsley. He resigned upon principle 
a sinecure that he had held for some years, and this 
at a period when the loss of the money was serious 
to him. His poor-rates were heavy, and the distress 
among the farmers also lessened his income, so that 
the sacrifice to principle was made at great personal 
cost. But Kingsley felt the spirit of Scott's words 
when he said, '' Time and I against any two ; " for he 
set to work at once to provide for the deficit in his in- 
come. He finished "Alton Locke," that incomparable 
picture of his sufiering fellow-creatures, — alas ! true 
in every page. Reynolds remarked truthfully that 
no man can put into a picture more than there 
is in himself, and the same is also true of books. 
As with every useful author, Kingsley put himself 
largely into his books, and their amount of heart 
is one of their charms. 

But there was such a prejudice against Kingsley 
in many quarters, that " Alton Locke " was rejected 
by the publishers to whom it was first offered. By 
the kind offices of Thomas Carlyle (who loved a 
man dearly when he strove to perform a man's 
work) the book was at length placed in the hands 



36 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

of a firm of publishers who were willing to incur 
the odium which issuing Kingsley's books involved 
at that time. 

This attack upon the tyranny that estimated the 
lives of men as less valuable than the goods which 
they manufacture at the cost of health and life itself, 
was followed up by a pamphlet, in which he assailed 
the same evil. Then, as if he had not enough assail- 
ants already attacking him, Kingsley threw himself 
into another conflict. George Eliot, whose influence 
upon this generation is of the nature one might expect 
from such as she was, translated Strauss's flimsy 
book upon the Life of Christ. This, Kingsley felt, 
should not go unanswered, when the interests in- 
volved were so great and the refutation so easy. 
As a general rule error is like fish, it soon exhibits 
its own decay ; but it is sometimes usefiU to speak 
out the truth, for fear any should be deluded by the 
colours of death, which are indeed only a sign of 
begun decay. This efibrt was the more needful 
because the distress among the working classes 
became extreme during the autumn, and men grow 
lawless in proportion as religion loses its wholesome 
terrors. Kingsley's house was among the number 
that were attacked by housebreakers, and, sorely 
against his will, he was compelled to arm himself. 

One of the Evangelical newspapers now commenced 
an attack upon him, upon the principle, perhaps, 
that " the principal business of good Christians is, 
beyond all controversy, to fight one another," as has 



THE I^ODERN CRUSADER.' 37 

been sadly observed. Kingsley, it is true, somewhat 
invited attack, but it is certainly a pity v^^lien the 
strength of a nation is wasted in civil war, to the 
joy of the enemies outside. After all, Christ is far 
vaster than any experience of Him can be, and it is 
surely more Christ-like to cover our brethrens' faults 
than. Ham-like, to jest at their follies. 

Cruden styled himself the censor, and he walked 
the streets with a sponge with which he wiped out 
all announcements that he supposed to be wrong 
and injurious to his fellow- creatures. Which office 
might with advantage be revived just now; it would 
certainly be more lovely than is the madness that at 
times possesses some Christians. It is not too much 
to say that in some parts of the Church of Christ it 
would be plain truth to expose a placard — " Mantraps 
and spring-guns set on these premises." 

But it was Kingsley's fortune to be a fighting 
man all his days ; indeed, he was a man of war from 
his youth. His contributions to social science will 
be referred to presently ; suffice it to note that in 
that he was also in advance of his age. 

The year 1 8 5 i was signalised by the opening of 
the Great Exhibition, which men imagined would 
begin a new era in the history of men. Kingsley 
recognised the immense benefits which the Exhibi- 
tion conferred upon the whole civilised world, but 
he could scarcely have been so sanguine as others 
were as to its results. 

His best work, " Hypatia," was commenced during 



38 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

this year, and it was passed through the pages of 
Frasers Magazine as a serial. It is undoubtedly 
his masterpiece, and in it the excellences and defects - 
of his mind appeared. As a picture exquisitely 
accurate of one of the most important periods of 
human history it is unrivalled among all the books 
of this age, while its influence as a moral force 
cannot now be gauged. It belongs also to that 
high order of books that express clearly what many 
feel but cannot themselves utter, while, also, alas ! 
it is an attack upon received beliefs concerning the 
future which is more difficult to repel than a treatise 
would have been. 

In the summer of the Exhibition year Kingsley 
experienced what was probably the most bitter of 
all the attacks that he endured. He had been 
invited to preach in a London church, and he dis- 
coursed as one might have expected him to speak. 
Had the clergyman who invited Kingsley been 
ignorant of Kingsley's views, it might have been 
wise of him to have allowed his visitor to say his say 
and then to have departed. But after having him- 
self arranged the service, the minister so far forgot 
what was due both to God and to his friend as to 
publicly denounce from the pulpit much of the ser- 
mon. The workijig men who thronged the building 
very naturally resented this injustice, and probably 
were more alienated from the Church by this well- 
intended attempt to win them than by previous years 
of neglect. Kingsley wisely attempted no reply at 



THE MODERN CRUSADER. 39 

the time; but when, weary and heart-sick, he returned 
home to Eversley again he found relief for his spirit in 
composing his exquisite ballad entitled "The Fishers." 
He required all the fortitude that he possessed to 
withstand the new attack which was hereupon made 
upon him. The papers took up the new scandal, and 
the Bishop of London allied himself with Kingsley's 
enemies so far that he forbade Kingsley to preach 
in the diocese of London. Subsequently, upon 
reading the sermon, the Bishop withdrew his pro- 
hibition ; but all this anxiety and conflict seriously 
injured Kingsley's health. To some natures such 
struggles are not harmful, but to a man of Kings- 
ley's exquisite sensibility even a victory purchased 
at such a price is like a defeat. The conflict left 
him exhausted in mind and body, and once more 
he was compelled to seek for rest. He left England 
in company with his parents, and amidst fresh 
scenes he acquired new impetus for the arduous 
conflict which was yet before him. The fact that he 
was so furiously assailed may perhaps be accounted 
for upon the principle which was indicated by the 
Chinese evangelist when he said that " he lamented 
the want of opposition, blaming his own unfaithful- 
ness as the only cause of such peace on the part of 
the powers of darkness." For no fortress cares to 
assail a train of baggage-mules, but every gun will 
be pointed against an approaching train of artillery. 
It is the severest condemnation when the Christian 
Church is let severely alone in contemptuous neglect ; 



40 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

then there is nothing for fallen Samson but to grind 
in the prison-house. Kingsley intended to combat 
every accessible enemy of God and man, and there- 
fore he encountered a violent resistance from men 
whose instincts compelled them to dread the incoming 
of light into their foul caverns. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE; OR, THE APOSTLE 
TO THE OUTCASTS. 

'• For knowledge is a steep which few may climb, 
While duty is a path which all may tread." 

— Epic of Hades. 

" Every human heart is human, 
And even in savage bosoms 
There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
Eor the good they comprehend not. 
And the feeble hands and helpless, 
Groping blindly in the darkness, 
Touch God's right hand in that darkness. 
And are lifted up and strengthened." 

— Longfellow. 



MAKING ALLOWANCES— THE SACRED SABBATH— CONSTRAINED 
TO SPEAK — "HYPATIA" — NOT UPON THE FATHERS, BUT 
UPON CHRIST — MORE LIGHT BEYOND. 

"My dear sir," Turner, the painter once remarked 
to a critic, " if you only knew how difficult it is to 
paint even a decent picture, you would not say the 
severe things that you do of those who fail." The 
counsel is good for all those whose only contribution 
to the service of man is a criticism, and it repre- 
sents also an element to be borne in mind in 

41 



42 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

estimating a life-work. The work of a pioneer is 
infinitely more diflficult tkan the enterprises of those 
who follow him ; his log hut may really be a greater 
triumph of art than a Grecian temple, all things 
being considered. 

Yetj while all this is true, fidelity to truth com- 
pels the writer to dissent from many of the views of 
Kingsley. His merits and usefulness are now gene- 
rally acknowledged, but it is imperative to remember 
that the truth has paramount claims upon us. 

During the year 1852 a proposal was made to 
open the Crystal Palace upon Sundays, upon the 
plea that by so doing drunkenness would be lessened. 
Such an end, of course, is infinitely desirable, but 
it has yet to be proved that the purpose intended 
would be accomplished by the suggested change. 
The drunken classes are not as a rule patrons of 
art, and the probabilities are that intemperance 
would increase instead of lessening. But even if 
the step be expedient, it has yet to be proved 'to 
be lawful, for in the judgment of many, the obliga- 
tion to keep the Sabbath is one of the primary laws 
of the moral constitution of man. And with all 
diflSdence, the writer would urge that the ends of 
the Sabbath are not attained unless it be recog- 
nised as a sacred rest, a day for worshipping God. 
It is true that the Sacred Day is a feast and not a 
fast, but a feast it is with a peculiar meaning and 
purpose. Had Kingsley lived for a few years longer, 
it is 'probable that he would have modified his views 



THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE. 43 

upon this point. For the well-being and prosperity 
of a nation depend entirely upon its obedience to 
the Divine law, of which the fourth commandment 
■forms a conspicuous and integral portion. 

Having said so much by way of criticism, it is 
pleasant now to point out the usefulness of Kingsley 
in other important directions. His correspondence 
was immense and exhaustive, for from all parts of 
the world men and women wrote to him for sym- 
pathy and guidance. Yet Kingsley did not com- 
plain, but he accepted the labour which was thus 
entailed upon him as a portion of his life-mission. 
Although this is rapidly becoming an age of post- 
cards, it is as well even now to employ the post 
as a moral force, for a letter wisely written may 
become of immense spiritual influence for good. 

During the summer of this same year, that is, 
in 1852, the fauiily of Judge Erskine settled in 
Eversley, to the great comfort and assistance of 
Xingsley. They gave him sympathy, counsel, and 
practical monetary help in the multiform duties of his 
charge. And this was the more needful, because as 
he was understood, more and more strangers flocked, 
often from a great distance, to hear Kingsley preach. 
To him this popularity was displeasing, as it must be 
with every finely-strung nature ; although, indeed, 
he did not desire to be crowded, yet it must have 
been a delight for him to find that, in spite of opposi- 
tion, and perhaps in consequence of it, he was able to 
secure an audience. It might be said of Kingsley, 



44 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

botli in his writing and in his preaching, as it was 
said of Burke by Johnson, " Burke's talk is the 
ebullition of his mind ; he does not talk from a 
desire of distinction, but because his mind is full." 
Kingsley felt that he had a message to deliver, and 
therefore he uttered what was to many most un- 
welcome truth ; but although he had no pleasure in 
wounding them, he could not repress that which 
burned within him for expression. Silence is not 
always golden, for at times it amounts to treason 
against God and cruelty to men. /We never really 
know a truth until we can testify it, and we know 
only potentially as we express that which is given 
into our charge^) Kingsley at this period offended 
many people (who might have been expected to 
have known better) by the publication of " Hypatia " 
as a book. This was issued in the year 1853, and it 
set forth the writer's opinions about the future state. 
Of the hereafter very little positive information is 
revealed in Scripture, but in the opinion of most 
Christian people the Scripture is clear in its asser- 
tion of the eternity, both of pain and of bliss. As 
with many others who have departed from the 
orthodox teaching upon this point, Kingsley's views 
shifted more than once; he was permanent only in 
his fierce and at times almost blasphemous denun- 
ciation of hell and of penalty. It is comparatively 
easy for any one to indicate difficulties in any 
solution of the after-life theory, but the question, 
after all, is one of revelation and also of God's jus- 



THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE. 45 

tice. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 
may well still every murmur at what, after all, we 
only dimly understand. Probably on account of the 
persistent preaching of these views (which many 
regarded as unscriptural and as having a tendency 
to weaken the moral restraints which are all too 
few with all of us), " Hypatia " was disliked by some. 
Others were less excusable in their opposition, for 
the exposure of the meanness, vileness, and wicked- 
ness of Cyril and other so-called fathers greatly 
displeased those who regarded them with intense 
reverence. As if men were not always and every- 
where the same, and the truth did not rest upon 
Divine sanctions rather than upon merely human 
testimonies ! Even supposing that all who had 
gone before us were as vile as it is possible for 
men to be, the Christian religion would not be 
affected by their follies. The obligation to believe 
and to obey the Gospel would even then be just as 
cogent as it is now, for the Gospel is addressed to 
every individual soul, quite apart and distinct from 
all others. To many excellent people, however, it 
appeared as if Kingsley were removing one of the 
pillars upon which they supposed that the Church 
rested, and they feared the doom of the Philistines. 
The ugly charge of heresy was hinted, and it cer- 
tainly did much to prevent Charles Kingsley from 
afterwards receiving a D.C.L. degree at Oxford. 
To a greater extent than we know, or are disposed 
to admit, the Christian Church acts upon the ancient 



46 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

assertion, " tliat every man has a rigiit to utter 
what he thinks truth, and that every man has a 
right to knock him down for it." Truth is many- 
sided, and it is always possible that some truth is 
invisible from every attainable point of view ; but 
above all things error should be dealt with gently, 
and in a Christian spirit. The antagonism of the 
Bar is out of place in themes that are the subject of 
a Divine revelation, and the Holy Spirit will never 
dwell in a contentious heart, even if that heart be 
that of a defender of the faith. Old John Robinson 
bade the pilgrim fathers remember that God had 
not yet shown them all that they might yet know. 

" He charged us," says the old chronicler, " that 
if God should reveal anything to us by any other 
instrument of His, to be as ready to receive it as 
any truth by his ministry ; for he was very confi- 
dent the Lord had more light and truth yet to 
break forth out of His Holy Word." George Rawson 
paraphrases the old man's words thus : — 

*' We hmit not the truth of God 

To our poor reach of mind 
By notions of our day or sect, ' 

Crude, partial, and confined. 
No ; let a near and better hope 

Within our breasts be stirred ; 
The Lord hath yet more light and truth 

To break forth from His Word." 

From various reasons, therefore, but with painful 
consequences to Kingsley, '' Hypatia " was generally 



THE GOSPEL OF THIS LIFE. 47 

received by the Church with regret and worse. 
But its missioiij as with others of Kingsley's boohs, 
was chiefly to the outcasts who are generally out- 
side all recognised Christian influences. 

And Kingsley's chief teaching to them was the 
divineness of all the nature of man ; asserting that 
the old Manichean view of the body, which is a 
part of ourselves, is utterly wrong. Every portion ^ 
of the body is a witness to the Divine skill and ^ 
wisdom, and it may also become the temple of f 
the Holy Ghost. For the useful evangelical revival 
had not put the present life in its true view. (We 
are not born merely in order to prepare for death, 
but also that in life we may enjoy and serve God, 
and find present happiness in Him?) Of course, the 
application of the vicarious atonement of our Lord 
and the renewal of the heart by the Divine Spirit 
are essential to true life, but men who are busy 
in practical matters require a present-day Gospel, 
which recognises even this world as God's kingdom, 
and the theatre of His grace. 

In the year 1854 Charles Kingsley spent the 
spring and winter at Torquay. This was on 
account of his wife's illness. During this visit 
Kingsley amused himself with the scientific wonders 
which were scattered upon the shore, and an ar- 
ticle upon them was subsequently developed into a 
volume which has been well received by the public. 
Here, too, he was once more amidst the stirring 
influences of the west country that he loved so 



^ 



48 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

devoutly, and the historical associations of hi^new 
home suggested to him ^' Westward Ho ! " — one' of 
the best, if not the very best, of his books. In the 
June of 1854 Kingsley had taken a house at 
Bideford, on account of his wife's health. This 
suggested the theme for the book, which is a power- 
ful sermon upon the tendencies of Romanism, ^t, 
would be a useful study if some one would tell us 
about t)he-- circumstances under which the great 
books which have influenced the world have been 
written?^ It would be found that in almost every 
case sickness and sorrow upon the part of the 
writer or of his dear ones was at least a part of 
the originating cause. Thus, Longfellow's words 
are true : — 

" Only those are crowned and sainted 
Who with grief have been acquainted, 
Making nations nohler, freer. 

In their feverish exultations, 

In their triumph and their yearning, 

In their passionate pulsations, 

In their words among the nations, 
The Promethean fire is burning." 



CHAPTER VI. 



STRIFE ABROAD, BUT PEACE AT HOME. 

" Not scathless those that sing such song, 
Grief their instructress, of the Muses chief .^ ^ 
To hearts by grief unvanquished, to their hearts 
Had taught a melody that neither spared 
Singer nor listener." 

— Legends of St. Patrick. 

" Let truth be told, but still without offence." 



THE CRIMEAN BLUNDERS AND SUFFERINGS — TEACHING THE 
NEGLECTED — WE ARE PENCILS — AT HOME A KING — MAR. 
RIAGE NOT FOR THIS LIFE ALONE. 

The Crimean war, into wliich the Englisli Govern- 
ment had drifted with a light heart, proved the 
inefficiency of the English military leaders, and the 
terrible sufferings which were endured by our brave 
soldiers in consequence, wrung the heart of the 
nation with indignation and anguish. " The great 
majority of us are clothed with rags," wrote one who 
was with the army. '' Some of us are without shoes ; 
others of us are without a cap to cover our heads 
from the pelting of the pitiless storm, and some of 
us have more mud than clothing attached to our 
bodies. Hundreds of sick and wounded are daily 
brought down famished, emaciated, and clothed in 

49 D 



50 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

rags. I have seen many a noble form a total wreck 
from tlie lack of timely aid. A heart-hardening 
process in the army is only too apparent. A party 
of soldiers was the other day seen playing at cards 
in the trenches, when a shot laid one of them low. 
Instantly they rose, carried the dead man away, 
and resumed their game." The story of the suffer- 
ings of our brave men who were sacrificed to the 
recklessness and incompetence of their leaders 
stirred many who could not feel that — 

" 'Tis nothing ; a private or two now and then 
Will not count in the tale of the battle ; 
Not an officer lost, only one of the men 
Breathing out all alone his death-rattle." 

Not only was an inquiry demanded, but practical 
relief was poured into the Crimea, private gene- 
rosity eclipsing Government grants in its eagerness 
to supply the needs of the soldiers. Kingsley felt 
keenly the exciting interest of the struggle, and he 
has given vent to his military instincts in " Two 
Years Ago." He wrote also a small tract to which 
he did not affix his name, and which was sent out 
in large quantities to the camp. And so the cam- 
paign went on with disastrous effects to the British 
Empire in India, where it contributed to produce 
afterwards the awful Mutiny. 

Meanwhile, in England, Kingsley published his 
" Westward Ho," which he dedicated to Bishop 
Selwyn and to Rajah Brooke, two noble and suc- 
cessful workers in the cause of civilisation and of 



STRIFE ABROAD, BUT PEACE AT HOME. 51 

rigTiteousness. The volume met witli considerable 
favour from the first, although Thackeray in the 
Times expressed some disapproval. When the book 
was off his mind, Kingsley felt the need of some 
other employment to occupy his restless energies. 
Madame de Stael has defined happiness as " a con- 
stant occupation for a desirable object which is 
constantly attended by a sense of continual pro- 
gress." It is true that continual progress seldom 
attends any enterprise, however laudable, for, like the 
tide, ebb and flow alternate with most efforts. Yet 
no man can be happy who is not really working, 
and that for ends outside himself and his interests. 
(The old story of the traveller who warmed himself 
i by his efforts to revive a dying man is a parable of 
t^ all life ; the reflex action of every good deed is both 
(a present reward and a promise of greater recom- 
:^ense yet to come. Kingsley, therefore, during his 
stay in fair Bideford attempted to gather around 
him the neglected and uneducated young- men of the 
town. He formed a drawing-class for their benefit, 
and himself instructed them, in some instances at 
least, with signal benefit to their future career. His 
own skill with the pencil was marvellous ; indeed 
one might have inferred this from the form and beauty 
of his sentences. And he possessed the artist gift, 
and could depict in a few strokes the thought that 
burned within him. So the days passed in useful 
work, with results that eternity alone will reveal. If 
the drawing:- classes had no other result than that 






52 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

wliicli attended Joseph Livesey's attempts at edu- 
cating the poor, tliej would have been worth the 
labour that they entailed. " I don't know that I 
made much, if any, progress in my irregular attend- 
ance at Mr. Livesey's night-school/' says Thomas 
Whittaker. " One thing, however, I did learn, and 
it has continued with me to the present day — I 
learned to love and esteem Joseph Livesey ; his is 
a name never to be forgotten." It is no small gain 
when the scholar learns to love and esteem his 
teacher, who thus becomes a useful lesson, whatever 
he may be able to impart to his pupils of other 
instruction. Kingsley, unselfish, generous, cultured, 
and exquisitely sensitive to the teachings of God in 
nature, must have been a noble influence upon the 
youths who gathered around him, and who learned 
from him what he also learned from Christ. "Let 
us remember that our children are pencils," said 
Richard Cecil ; and so also are the lives that, for 
their good or evil, come into daily contact with us ; 
for by them we portray ourselves upon the time 
which is yet to come. It is a serious and necessary 
inquiry as to what we are by them depicting for 
coming generations to read. 

Kingsley returned to Eversley once more, but 
only to find that during the winter his wife could 
not live in the damp Parsonage house. But instead 
of being compelled to remove to a distance, he was 
able to find a house in an adjoining district which did 
not necessitate his prolonged absence from his charge. 



STRIFE ABROAD, BUT PEACE AT HOME. 53 

The formation of tlie military camp at Aldershot 
also brought new interest and new responsibilities 
to him. Always interested in military men and 
their needs, he formed many friendships among the 
officers. Nor was he afraid to speak out when he 
thought that his duty required him to reprove what 
he felt to be wrong in them. His colours, like 
Nelson's, were nailed to the mast, and those who 
knew him most intimately say that Kingsley was 
like Hannington, of whom it was said, "that all his\ 
life, his amusement, as well as his labour, was per- J 
meated by his faith in the Unseen." Therefore, " the 
business of seeking to influence souls for Christ 
was never alien to any of his moods." Of Kingsley 
this was true, and he employed methods which were 
his own, and therefore the best for him to use. He 
was still consulted by many who had been affected 
by his books, and who desired to break free from 
the fetters which early vice had forced upon them. 
To such Kingsley was a genuine son of consolation, 
and for them he ungrudgingly gave the best of his 
mind and heart. To gather the outcasts is the 
Saviour's work^ He Himself describes His office 
as that of the shepherd (^ho goeth after that which 
is lost until he find ItJ)-" and men are likest God 
when so they do. The need for sympathy prompted 
the Eomish Confessional, which is a perversion of 
the true method which God has devised. Every 
man should become such, that all who are dis- 
heartened and discouraged may be able to turn to 



54 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

him, confident that they will not be rejected or 
betrayed when they confess their faults. Such was 
Kingsley, and therefore he was able to help so many 
of his fellow-men. 

Among those who visited Kingsley during this 
year of 1856 was Mrs. Beecher Stowe, who, like 
many Americans, has recorded her impressions and 
memories of English scenes and persons. Mrs. 
Stowe, it is true, did not come to Eversley for sym- 
pathy, but it was a tribute to Kingsley's genius that 
the authoress of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " visited him. 
And visited him in his own home, where he was 
pre-eminently at his best. Many extremely worthy 
people leave their courtesy and almost their piety 
outside their door-mat ; at home their natures are 
under no restraint, and they are not compelled to 
preserve the courtesies which make life bearable. 
Bunyan remarks that Talkative " was a saint abroad 
and a devil at home," and it is to be feared that 
there are many who are like him in this respect. 
At home Kingsley, on the contrary, was at his best, 
and there his best qualities pre-eminently shone. 
He had not, it is true, the pecuniary anxieties and 
difficulties which sometimes shadow the homes of 
business men, but he left, as all men may do, his 
work and all its troubles outside the family circle. 
■j In his home Kingsley was all brightness, and he 
[continued to impart his own sunny spirit to those 
• who lived with him. With him, love did not cease 
at the altar, and his devotion to his wife partook 



STRIFE ABROAD, BUT PEACE AT HOME. 55 

of the romance of old cMvalry. This was probably 
owing partly to his natural high-toned courtesy, 
but it was also owino^ to his own hi2:h ideas of 
marriage. " A true idea of the institution of mar- 
riage," says Dr. Dale, " lies very near the founda- 
tion of every true philosophy of human life, and 
aJects the whole theory of the rights and duties 
loth of men and of women, and of their relations 
to each other. Marriage rests upon the possibility 
of the absolute mutual surrender to each other of 
man and woman ; a surrender in which nothing is 
reserved but loyalty to God and to those supreme 
moral duties which no human relationship can 
disturb and modify. It rests not only on the 
possibility of that perfect blending of life and 
interest, but on the strength and blessedness which 
come from it. And any theory of marriage which 
would impair the completeness of the resolution of 
two individual lives into a higher though complex 
unity is a departure from that ideal which, in our 
highest, noblest, and happiest hours, asserts for each 
one of us its authority and truth." These are 
noble words, and they are true as they are worthy 
to be remembered. They explain Kingsley's view 
of the sacred relationship which our Saviour has 
constituted a model and type of His union with 
His saints. Towards his wife Kingsley ever mani- 
fested his affection, and he clung firmly to the 
devout hope (which is cherished by many others) 
that the tie which is created by marriage is pro- 



56 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

bably eternal. Of late years the fact that a lead- 
ing journal could discuss the question, ^' Is marriage 
a failure ? " shows the low esteem into which tbe 
sacred bond has fallen. We require a repetition 
i of Kingsley's teaching in order that woman may 
I receive her due, and the national life be kept puie 
|at its source. 

As a natural consequence of his devoted affectioa 
towards his wife, Kingsley was tender and con- 
siderate towards his children. Sir James Wylie 
has discovered as the result of careful investiga- 
tions that four times as many patients recover from 
their sickness when they are placed in clear sun- 
shine as do those who are in the dark, and this 
is a most important principle in morals. Cheer- y 
I fulness is a most powerful medicine and preventive/ 
s against moral and social perils both for old ana 
ij'oung. Kingsley possessed the mirth-provokingV 
faculty in a very eminent degree, and he did not 
scruple to use it. He felt rightly that humour and 
wit are gifts of God, and are to be used for His 
glory. He at least did not assent to George 
Herbert's singular saying — 

*' All Solomon's sea of brass and world of stone 
Is not so dear to God as one good groan." 

Without doubt there is a frivolity which is ruinous — 
giggle and make giggle are terribly demoralising, 
but a cheerful spirit is a part of the work of grace, 
and joy in the Lord is one of the marks of the new 
birth. Goldsmith said that he had a knack of 



STRIFE ABROAD, BUT PEACE AT HOME. S7 

r hoping, and Dr. Johnson said also that a habit of 
\ looking at the bright side of things was worth a 
/thousand pounds per year to any man. Kingsley 
had that habit, and he did not scruple to use it 
at home. His piety was never sour and vinegary, 
and therefore his children loved him. All life is 
necessarily so sad, that any man who will assist his 
fellows to bear their burdens easily is sure of being 
popular, for men turn to cheerfulness as they do 
to a sunny landscape. It cheers and brightens 
them, and merely looking at it lightens the heart. 

It is true that with regard to the Sabbath 
Kingsley was led into excess, but this may have 
been a revolt against the narrow, evangelical strict- 
ness of his childhood's home. The spirit which 
forbade a mother to kiss her child on a Sunday 
is undoubtedly unscriptural, but so also is the 
making of the Lord's Day into a holiday. Cricket 
on the green at Eversley on Sunday afternoons was 
no doubt popular, but it was certainly a breach of 
the fourth commandment, which, as is every other 
precept of the moral law, is still binding upon Chris- 
tians. The holy day, it is true, has been changed from 
the seventh to the first, but this has been done by the 
highest authority of all. Cricket also is not a primary 
necessity of human nature, but the worship of God 
is ; and, after all, the old adage is true that — 

*' A Sabbath well spent 
Brings a week of content, 
And health for the toil of the morrow ; 



58 MEN WITH A MISSION, 

But a Sabbath profaned, 
Whate'er may be gained, 
Is the certain forerunner of sorrow." 

In Kingsley's home, indeed, tlie Sabbath was 
marked as a day of gladness, for then bis children 
brought out their Sunday picture-books, in which 
he drew whatever animal or subject they might select, 
and the early hours of the day were spent by them in 
decking the graves in the churchyard with flowers. 
Such a custom is, of course, impossible in some 
homes, but yet it is surely possible to do far more 
than has ever yet been done by any one to make 
the Sabbath a delight to the children and servants 
of the family. A true idea of the Sabbath obliga- 
tion and an earnest attempt to rise to its solemn 
meaning would do much to heal the breaches of 
religious and national life. This, however, will 
not be until right views prevail as to the supreme 
authority of the Word of God. 



CHAPTER VII. 

MISUNDERSTOOD; OR, DIFFERENT, AND 
THEREFORE WRONG. 

" But good my brother, 
Do not as some ungracious pastors do, — 
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
Whilst like a puff 'd and careless libertine, 
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, 
And recks not his own rede." — Shakespeare. 

*' He had perceived the presence and the power 
Of Greatness ; and deep feeling had impressed 
Great objects on his mind with portraiture 
And colour so distinct, that on his mind 
They lay like substances, and almost seemed 
To haunt the bodily sense." — Wordsworth. 

" God was using these things to create in me a sense of vocation, 
confused at first, but becoming ever more distinct." — Casalis. 



CONVERTED BY FEAR — SUFFERING FOR FAITHFULNESS — 
INDIAN MUTINY AND ITS HORRORS — THE CHILDREN IN 
DANGER— PREACHING BEFORE PRINCES— THE INEQUALI- 
TIES OF LIFE. 

In " My Life in Basuto Land " we are told that tlie 
Dutcli colonists tried to excuse their cruelties to the 
poor helpless natives by alleging that they supposed 
that thereby they (the Dutch) were advancing the 
cause of religion. " Am I not a Christian ? " one of 

59 



6o MEN WITH A MISSION. 

them inquired. " I have a white skin and long 
hair ! I have been baptized and I sing psalms 1 " 
Which is similar to the Irishman's definition of the 
Methodists as the people whose religion consisted in 
their wearing long whiskers ! 

In various degrees the same kind o£ spirit lingers 
amongst us even yet, and it requires a faithful deal- 
ing with on the part of those who would help their 
fellow-men. Almost all through his life Kingsley 
was looked at suspiciously by many excellent people, 
who, if they believed in him at all, regarded him in 
much the same kind of spirit. He was an ori- 
ginal, and grew foliage of his own, and as in many 
respects he refused to be clipped into shape after 
the orthodox fashion, men hinted at more than they 
dared to say about him. It was, however, his powef^ 
that he was one by himself, for the gifts of hisj 
genius were for a special and peculiar purpose. 

When, therefore, in the year 1857, Kingsley pub- 
lished his " Two Years Ago," the book was met with 
a chorus of disapproval from many who did not 
understand its drift and purpose. It was not after 
the pattern of the books which they were accus- 
tomed to read or to approve, and therefore they 
supposed that it must be evil. Yet the ■ book is 
one that must do good to every intelligent reader, 
because it deals with facts as they really are in the 
world around us. For outside the circle of our) 
immediate acquaintance there are throngs of those • 
who both require and will repay religious teaching. ^ 



MISUNDERSTOOD. 6i 

To these outcasts Kingsley spoke, and these 
he really did influence for good in " Two Years 
Ago." 

The book was issued from the press at a period 
when, for the first time in three years, Kingsley 
was able to spend the winter in his own home at 
Eversley; that is, in the year 1857. 

The same year brought to England the awful 
news of the Indian Mutiny, and Kingsley shared to 
the full the national frenzy which arose when the 
horrible story was related. 

" I regard it as the dying effort of Brahminism," 
said Lord Shaftesbury, " which is visibly, palpably 
declining ; all its remaining strength is excited and 
concentrated for one final struggle. And bear this 
in mind, the retribution that follows upon these 
crimes must be equal to the nature and extent of 
the crimes themselves. I maintain that justice, 
pure simple justice, demands we should exact of 
these men that compensation which is due to that 
crime unparalleled in the history of mankind. We 
do not seek for revenge. God forbid that the word 
should be used in our declamation ! And God for- 
bid that the sentiment should enter into our hearts ! 
But there is such a thing as justice, and there is 
such a thing as a sense of justice imprinted upon 
the human heart by the hand of God Himself. 
Justice, I hold, must be satisfied ; every principle of 
policy and every principle of religion require it — 
it is your policy, and the greatest policy in the 



62 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

sense of humanity, that justice should be fully 
exercised." 

"Nothing can be more just and moderate," said 
the Times in reviewing Lord Shaftesbury's speech, 
" than what he says about punishment;" in fact, 
all England was furiously agreed in its demand for 
a stern penalty. Although Kingsley had neither 
personal friend nor relative among the sufferers, he 
felt keenly the awful wickedness of the Mutiny. 
The story of Oawnpore will always be regarded 
with horror by civilised men, but when the tidings 
of the massacre first reached home, the feeling was, 
of course, much keener than it can be now. 

The year after the Mutiny — that is, in 1 8 5 8 — not 
only did evil tidings, but far worse came to our 
shores ; for in that year diphtheria first appeared 
among us. This scourge of childhood had been 
previously unknown in Britain, and it therefore 
excited as much alarm as the plague had formerly 
done. The terror and danger were equally a call to 
Kingsley, who, like all men of strong nature, was an 
intense lover of little children. He. went about his 
parish carrying with him the remedies, which he 
taught his people by example how to employ. 
Since the cessation of miracles in the world, such 
service is as much a part of the Gospel as preaching, 
and by it Kingsley performed loyal service for God. 

In the same year of grace — that is, in 185 8 — 
Kingsley published a volume of poems, which met 
with a more favourable reception from the critics than 



MISUNDERSTOOD. 63 

his previous books had received. During the next 
year — that is, in 1859 — Kingsley also first began to 
receive favourable notice from high quarters, for on 
Palm-Sunday of that year he preached before the 
Queen and Prince Consort at Buckingham Palace, 
Although Kingsley had been an ardent advocate of 
the suffering poor, his tastes were especially aris- 
tocratical, and he feared God not more than he 
honoured the Queen. For, while it is natural in 
a free country that the head of the State should be 
freely criticised, loyal men should be careful not 
to speak evil of the ruler of their people. A form 
of government is essential to happy life, and rests 
upon Divine authority. So that government restsl 
not upon the consent of the nation only, but also, J 
the nation having consented to the particular ; 
form of government that may have been selected, 
the head of the State rules by Divine authority. 2 
Kingsley was not a courtier in any other sense 
than that in which his hero. Sir Richard Grenville, 
was a courtier, although he had instinctively the 
old-world loyalty for rank and station. Hence it 
was a personal gratification as much as an honour 
which he had earned when he was appointed one of 
the Queen's chaplains, and when in that capacity he 
preached in his turn before the Court. His merit 
was becoming clear and recognised, for the Prince 
Consort was a keen judge of character, and had he 
lived he would probably have advanced Kingsley to 
further honours than he attained. But such is the 



64 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

irregularity of tlie system of moral government 
under which we live, that often the recognition and 
reward of merit come when they are too late to be 
enjoyed. God, indeed, has not promised to reward 
virtue in the present condition of affairs, and He 
often permits virtue to suffer unrewarded and vice 
to sin unchecked, because He has a long eternity in 
which to adjust and to explain all that is perplexing 
here. 

It is worthy, too, of notice, how as he grew 
older, Kingsley more and more recognised the 
Divine Hand which is slowly working out in the 
world the purpose of righteousness, even by adverse 
things. This truth of the Divine sovereignty and 
rule is, after all, that which the mind most requires 
for its comfort during the seasons of perplexity 
which come to us all at times. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COATj OR, NO 
PEACE HERE. 

" I have been from my childhood always of a Tumorous and stormy 
nature. " — Luthek. 

" Low, wretched, and dismal as they are, we see in them the 
nursery of the Christian faith ; and truly it is in keeping, for if the 
Founder of our religion was born in a stable, we must not be sur- 
prised that His humble and despised followers had no better shelter 
than the tombs." — LoED Shaftesbuet on the Catacombs. 

'"The fires were kept constantly supplied with human fuel by 
monks, who knew the art of burning Reformers better than that 
of arguing with them. The scaffold was the most conclusive of 
syllogisms, and used upon all occasions. Still the people remained 
unconvinced. Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single 
convert." — Motley on the Dutch Republic. 



APPOINTED PROFESSOR — DEATH OF HIS FATHER— IS PRAYER 
OF ANY AVAIL ?— WATCHED WITH RAT'S EYES — DEATH 
OF PRINCE ALBERT— SCIENCE NOT OPPOSED TO THE 
BIBLE. 

In the year i860 anotlier honour fell to Kings- 
ley's lot, for then Lord Palmerston, perhaps at the 
instigation of Lord Shaftesbury, who was his son-in- 
law, offered Kingsley the post of Regius Professor 
of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. 

Kingsley at once accepted the position, and the more 

65 E 



66 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

readily because it brought him into contact with 
the student youth of the University. Although 
some of the college authorities had been prejudiced 
very much against him on account of his books, 
yet when he went up in the summer in order to 
take his M.A. degree, Kingsley was very kindly 
received. He was much gratified by this favourable 
reception, which indeed was almost essential to his 
doing any good among the young men. The pleasure 
of this appointment was, however, speedily dashed by 
a bereavement \^iich fell upon him during the fall of 
the same year. '^J^r an acid is always mixed in the 
sweetest cup to prevent the injurious effects which 
might follow from too much sweet in our lot) ToY 
Kingsley the loss was a very great one, for with ) 
the death of a father the home is for ever destroved. J 
Nothing can compensate for the loss which is, of 
course, the greater the better the departed has been 
beloved. From the time of his father's death until 
her own death Kingsley's aged mother lived with 
him at Eversley. 

During the year i860 Kingsley once more en- 
raged the orthodox, who did not perhaps under- 
stand his meaning, or perhaps were unable to look 
beyond the present. The summer of the year was 
a very wet one, and mindful only of the present 
seen effects of the rain, many religious men began to 
pray for fine weather. Kingsley understood better 
what benefit the rains were to our country, and he 
preached a sermon upon the subject, which he after- 



THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT. 67 

wards published. The cholera had been for a long 
time threatening an outbreak, but the heavy rains 
averted the calamity by cleansing the drains and 
sewers, and thus removing much dangerous matter 
which would have produced or fed the disease. The 
smaller evil he felt to be as nothing when compared 
with the larger benefit, and he said so. Some expres- 
sions in the sermon, it is to be regretted, with regard 
to prayer were open to serious misapprehension, 
for some people supposed from them that Kingsley 
objected to special prayer. This was not the case, ^ 
but believing as he did most intensely in the Divine , 
Wisdom with regard to all the events of life, Kingsley . 
rightly believed that although men may not be able 
to detect the purpose which is behind the Divine 
action, yet, after all, what God sends is actually, 
and essentially, the very best for us. This principle 
requires guarding, for we are permitted and even 
commanded to pray ; in all things by prayer and 
supplication is the Divine rule and standard, but 
there is one view of prayer which would make man 
the ruler of his own destiny. Of course, no one in- 
tends to do this, but in effect this is sometimes done, 
and against this want of submission to .God's will 
Kingsley sturdily protested. In such matters we are 
as little children, but Tupper has beautifully expressed 
what is perhaps the truth of the question : — 

*' Thus, O worshipper of reason, thou hast heard the sum of the 
matter : 
And woe to his hairy scalp that restraineth prayer before 
God. 



68. MEN WITH A MISSION. 

Prayer is a creature's strength, his very breath and being : 
Prayer is the golden key that can open the wicket of mercy ; 
Prayer is the magic sound that saith to Fate, * So be it ; ' 
Prayer is the tender nerve that moveth the muscles of 

Omnipotence ; 
Wherefore pray, O creature, for many and great are thy 

wants. 
Thy mind, thy conscience, and thy being, thy rights command 

thee unto prayer, 
The cure of all cares, the grand panacea for all pains, 
Doubt's destroyer, ruin's remedy, the antidote to all anxieties ; 
So then God is true, and yet He hath not changed. 
It is He that sendeth the petition, to answer it according to 

His will." 

In ttie autumn of tlie year i860 Kingsley went 
up to Cambridge for his first residence. His in- 
augural lecture was subsequently printed as a book 
under tbe title of " The Koman and the Teuton." 
The students at Cambridge took readily to him, and 
pronounced that, whether they agreed with Kingsley 
or not, they liked him. And this because Kingsley 
aimed at practical benefit in all that he said and 
did. " Did you ever hear me preach ? " Coleridge 
is said to have once asked a man. " I never heard 
you do anything else/' was the somewhat sarcastical 
reply. Kingsley also 'was always preaching; that 
is, he sought by all means and at all times to in- 
culcate the great principles of righteousness, and to 
illustrate their consequences in daily life. And men 
love to be faithfully dealt with in God's name, if 
only the preacher be true to his Master and Lord. 
Kingsley's life well accorded with his own teachings, 
and although, to quote a South Sea phrase, " he was 



THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT. 69 

watched witii rat's eyes," there was no crookedness 
in him. Hence his preaching became attractive to y 
young men, and under his skilful treatment history ^ 
became a living and eloquent portrait gallery in \ 
which one might — V^^ 

" Justify the ways of God to men." 

Our Saviour is a justification of this method of 
teaching, for He took His texts from the incidents 
of daily life and the scenes of nature, which were 
thus made types and parables of nobler and Divine \ 
things. Of course, in all, Christ and His atonement / 
/ are the central truth which explains and gives 
/ meaning to every secondary truth, but it is good 
( not to forget that some needful truths are beauti- 
^ fully taught to us in nature which are preparatory; 
) for the greater revelations of grace. 

It was a tribute both to Kingsley's personal merit 
and also to his ability as a tutor, that at the express 
desire of the Prince Consort, the Prince of Wales 
was entrusted to his care for the study of modern 
history. In February 1861 Kingsley formed a 
private class, which consisted of eleven members, 
at his own house in Cambridge. The Prince of 
Wales rode over every morning to attend this class, 
and his diligence and dignified courtesy quite won 
his tutor's heart. 

Kingsley had also learned to love the Prince 
Consort, whose noble qualities were only dimly dis- 
cerned by the nation when he was taken away from 



70 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

uSj and it was therefore a personal bereavement to 
him when Prince Albert died. Then at last Eng- 
land, who had never previously understood the Prince, 
awoke to a sense of his high qualities, and intense 
sympathy was roused among all classes for the be- 
reaved Queen. It is doubtful if history supplies 
another similar example of national sorrow at the 
death of a ruler as was witnessed when Prince Albert 
died. Death is busy everywhere, but men, by the 
wise arrangement of Providence, must not stay their 
labour because of weeping, and indeed the Divine 
medicine of work is one of the appointed remedies 
for bereavement. Kingsley, therefore, in spite of 
his sorrow, during this year finished his children's 
book which is entitled " The Water-Babies." 

Geology had long been a fascinating study to 
Kingsley, as it cannot but be to any one who has 
sufficient patience to master the initial difficulties. 
The testimony of the rocks he had regarded and 
interpreted to others, and the study of stones had 
been, almost as much as botany, his favourite relaxa- 
tion. In the year 1862 his contributions to this 
science (which as yet is probably only in its infancy) 
were favourably recognised by the highest authority, 
for he was then elected as a Fellow of the Geological 
Society. All through his ministry Kingsley con- 
tended that there was no necessary antagonism 
between science and the Scriptures, nor indeed can 
there possibly ever be so. It is, of course, customary 
to regard the believers of revelation as chiefly in fault 



THE SOLDIER IN A BLACK COAT. 71 

for this hostility, but although they have had much 
to answer for upon this account, they are by no 
means the sole offenders. There has been, upon 
the part of some men of science at least, a disposi- 
tion to square the supposed teachings of science, 
so as to damage the authority of the Bible. But 
that book is authenticated by evidence which is 
peculiar to itself, and which cannot be gainsaid, 
and while human interpretations of it may be 
erroneous, the divine facts and principles that are 
contained in it cannot be wrong. It is far better 
to await higher light than to assume a contradic- 
tion which in many cases, it is to be feared, is merely 
alleged as a mask for personal neglect of the Gospel 
and its claims. After all, many of the supposed 
contradictions may be dealt with upon the principle 
of the countryman who described a harmony of the 
Gospels as an attempt to make four men agree 
who had never fallen out ! 

God may be safely left to take care of what He 
Himself has revealed, and further search will only 
disclose deeper harmonies than ever have been 
known before. All knowledge is good, and if it 
be held devoutly, it may contribute to the growth 
of the spirit in truth and righteousness. Fighting, 
therefore, the battle of science against a narrow 
ecclesiasticism which will not admit the progress of 
mind, and combating, on the other hand, the dog- 
matism which ignores the Bible, Kingsley did his 
best to lead both to a higher view of God. 



72 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

So he went his way quietly, as, on the whole, 
most lives are spent, until, in the year 1863, he 
was privileged to attend the wedding of the Prince 
of Wales. This was certainly the most popular 
royal wedding that had been seen for a long period 
in Britain, and Kingsley was much affected by it, 
for he devoutly loved his pupil. The affection was 
reciprocated, and when, in the following summer, 
the Prince and Princess of Wales visited Oxford, it 
was the express wish of the Prince that his tutor 
should receive the degree of D.O.L. But such 
intense opposition was made to this suggestion 
upon the part of those who obeyed Pusey as leader 
that the purpose was abandoned. The alleged 
reason for this persecution was the asserted im- 
moral tendency of Kingsley's books. Whereas he 
had but portrayed facts which none but persistent 
eye-shutters could ignore, and had sought in his 
own way to remedy evils which were too great 
for others to do more than forget. Kingsley felt 
the blow keenly, but he bowed to it in the spirit 
which King David manifested when Shimei cursed 
him : "So l^t him curse, because the Lord hath 
said unto him, Curse David." 



CHAPTEE IX. 

'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 

" Oh how skilful grows the hand 
That obeyeth love's command ! 
It is the heart, and not the brain, 
That to the highest doth attain, 
And he who followeth love's behest 
Far exceedeth all the rest." 

— LONGIFELLOW. 

" Ah, alas ! how many weeds 
In my heart I've cherished, 
And how many precious seeds 
Through neglect have perished ! " 

— DOWDING. 

"God's Jacobs wrestle with God, but none shall wrestle with 
them and prevail." — Spurgeon. 



"THRASH THEM WELL "—CONTROVERSY WITH NEWMAN — 
VISIT TO SPAIN — THE TWO REVELATIONS— THE FRANCO- 
GERMAN WAR — ATTACKED AGAIN. 

The interpreter who accompanied the first mis- 
sionaries into Basuto Land suggested one day that 
the best method of converting his fellow-country- 
men would be to thrash them well ! " I will help 
you," said he, " and you shall see how well I can 
handle my whip. The only way of getting any- 

73 



74 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

thing into these fellows is by blows." This has 
been the long-accepted method of the Papacy, and 
such is its spirit to-day. It goes without saying 
that such a man as Kingsley was could not avoid 
a conflict with the far-reaching power of Romanism. 
The whole system, in its aggressive inroads into 
home life, and especially in its offensive and degrading 
teachings with regard to marriage, aroused his martial 
ardour, and he did his utmost to combat it as a 
national peril. It was not, however, that Bomanists 
in themselves were hateful to Kingsley ; for, on the 
contrary, he fully admitted the virtues and patriotism 
of many of them ; but Papacy, as a crafty enemy 
of married life, and especially as a political menace, 
incensed him. He was, moreover, consulted by 
many persons who were lured by the tempting baits 
that such a system offers to distressed souls, while 
others earnestly seeking for help and light upon the 
greatest of all questions asked him for aid which he 
could not refuse. In almost all his books Kingsley 
returned to the attack upon the system which, through 
the Tractarian revival, then seemed likely to subdue 
all England ; and, as will be seen, he even crossed 
swords with Cardinal Newman himself, who was not 
only a Papal dignitary, but also one of the most 
accomplished controversialists of the day. Every 
effort counts in such a mortal conflict, and Kings- 
ley was able to save very many persons from 
the strong delusion and the remorseful awakening 
which reconciliation with Rome involves for those 



'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 75 

who are deluded into the spider's web. Hating the 
Papal tyranny as one of the worst forms of existing 
superstition, Kingsley unwittingly found himself 
involved, in the year 1865, in a controversy with 
Cardinal ISTewman. He was without a doubt out- 
matched, for his antagonist was one of the most 
subtle disputants of the day, but probably most 
Englishmen felt that Kingsley lost no honour in 
the unequal struggle. 

Weary and unwell, Kingsley accepted an invita- 
tion to pay a visit to Spain. The Iberian Peninsula 
will always be interesting to Britons, if only for its 
connection with Wellington ; but quite apart from 
this special interest, it presents to a student of 
human nature peculiar features which are nowhere 
else so prominent. Its decline and fall are one of the 
most signal instances of the decay which follows the 
Saviour's curse. Some day a better Gibbon will 
point out the lessons of Spain's downfall as a pre- 
sent-day appeal to human needs, and a lesson for 
human care and study. 

This change of scene did Kingsley much good, 
although it was not a sufficiently long holiday to 
restore him to perfect health once more. In these 
days of rapid living, men are tempted to forget that 
there are laws of health which cannot be disobeyed, 
and which, if neglected, avenge themselves upon the 
transgressor. During the autumn of this same year 
of grace Kingsley added to his other employments, 
for he was then appointed one of the select preachers 



76 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

for tlie University of Cambridge. He then de- 
livered four sermons upon the life of King David, 
and these discourses awakened considerable interest 
among the graduates. The life-story of the man 
after God's own heart will always be of spiritual 
importance to all Christian people, and among all 
the heroes of faith David continues to hold the 
chief place. These and other labours so much 
exhausted Kingsley, that he was compelled to take 
another complete rest, which he obtained upon the 
eastern coast of England. Yet, while his physical 
and mental exhaustion prevented his attempting 
for a time any further service, Kingsley continued 
keenly sensitive to the solemn realities of the 
Gospel. To him the truths of revelation were solid 
realities, and God was ever intensely present and 
vivid to his imagination. It was this realisation of 
God's nearness which made science such an attrac- 
tive study to Charles Kingsley ; he felt keenly 
that which Cowper has said of the true man : — 

" He looks abroad into the varied field 
Of nature, and though poor, perhaps, compared 
With those whose mansions glitter in his sight, 
Calls the delightful scenery all his own. 
His are the mountains, and the valleys his, 
And the resplendent rivers ; his to enjoy 
With a propriety which none can feel 
But who, with filial confidence inspired, 
Can lift to heaven an unpresumptuous eye. 
And, smiling, say, ' My Father made them all.' 
Are they not his by a peculiar right ? 
And by an emphasis of interest his ? 
Whose eye they fill with tears of holy joy, 



'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 77 

Whose heart with praise, and whose exalted mind 
With worthy thoughts of that unwearied love 
That planned and built and still upholds a world 
So clothed with beauty for rebellious man ? " 

With such a belief it is no wonder that Kingsley 
was able to drink delight from all nature, and that 
in spite of ill health he continued to work at what 
he believed to be his peculiar mission. 

His circle of friends was narrowed during the 
year 1865 by the death of Dr. Whewell, who had 
been, during a long life, a leader in every movement 
for university progress and reform. But Cambridge 
possessed a new interest for Kingsley, because his 
eldest son was now studying there under his father's 
eye. The gentry of the town and its vicinity also 
welcomed Kingsley heartily to their homes, so that 
his residence in Cambridge was extremely pleasant 
to him. His affectionate, open spirit fascinated his 
hosts, and from the stores of his ready mental 
wealth he drew that which unconsciously enriched 
them in heart and home. Such men as Kingsley are 
utterly unconscious of the enormous influence for 
good which they exert upon their friends and cir- 
cumstances, but they are the choicest gifts of God to 
the world. Nor, amid the honours which were 
beginning to crowd out of his memory the con- 
tempt and suspicion with which he had been for 
long years regarded by the upper classes, did 
Kingsley neglect or forget the poor. Indeed, a 
deepening interest in them marked his extending 



78 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

influence over their wealthier brethren, and he did 
not relax his efibrts in order to benefit them. In his 
own parish of Eversley, Kingsley did his utmost in 
order to brighten the lives of those who are familiar 
with forms of distress and anxiety that are unknown 
to the classes who are relieved from the pressure 
of poverty. To the labouring poor of the agricul- 
tural districts life is intensely weary and hopelessly 
barren, and Kingsley was one of the earliest pioneers 
in the efibrts which are now being made with so 
much success in every parish in order to educate 
and interest the poor. He instituted a series of 
penny readings, which were interspersed with con- 
certs for them, and he employed all other available 
methods of awakening the torpid mental energies 
of the people. A narrow and ignorant religionism, 
which leaves out of sight the triumphs of art and 
music, cannot attract or help the miserable masses ; 
for while it is true that something more is required 
for the social and moral regeneration of the people 
than good music or a knowledge of the English poets, 
it is also true that these things are handmaids of the 
Gospel, and may be made both subservient to its pur- 
poses and helpful to its mission. Kingsley believed 
in the use of every lawful means in the best of all 
services ; he was indeed all things to all men, as 
was St. Paul, if by any means that he might save 
some. " Let us glorify the room," one was accus- 
tomed to say when he drew up the blinds, that the 
sunlight might stream in ; Kingsley believed that 



'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 79 

every ray of sunligtit came from God, and lie wel- 
comed all tliat would brighten tlie dreary lives of men. 
It was this spirit that won for Kingsley the intense 
love which many men who ordinarily despised 
Christian ministers felt for him ; he was able to 
strike point's of union which made them regard 
him as a friend. And, above all things, he was 
real, and had no cant in him. 

His political insight was keen and his instincts 
acute, but Kingsley was sometimes grossly mistaken 
with regard to political matters. For example, 
during the summer of the year 1866 he took part 
in a banquet which was given at Southampton 
to Eyre, who, as Governor of Jamaica, had pro- 
voked a rebellion, which he had afterwards repressed 
with needless cruelty. The majority of educated 
Englishmen felt that Eyre had also been guilty of 
a foul crime in his execution of Gordon, who was 
personally obnoxious to him, but Kingsley, perhaps 
deluded by Carlyle, publicly expressed his sympathy 
with him. This may perhaps be partially attri- 
buted to the fact that Eyre stood alone and con- 
demned by almost the whole body of the nation, but 
it is a pity that Kingsley was upon the wrong side. 
With regard to the Franco- Prussian war, Kingsley 
was in sympathy with his fellow-countrymen, for 
he heartily rejoiced at the Prussian successes. 
The sympathies of most Britons were entirely with 
Germany in her resistance of the unprovoked and 
cruel invasion which Napoleon attempted for pur- 



8o MEN WITH A MISSION. 

poses of his own ; he, with many others, realised 
also what a menace to the well-being and liber- 
ties of Europe the triumph of France would mean, 
and for that reason, among others, Kingsley re- 
joiced at her defeat. At the same time, his saga- 
cious eye detected that Germany should, for her 
own future safety, and in order to prevent any 
such attack as Napoleon had planned, demand the 
annexation of Alsace. 

Peace in his own life was not, however, to continue 
long, for during the next year ( 1 868) he was so much 
disturbed by the attacks that were made upon him, 
that he seriously thought of resigning his professor- 
ship. His lectures were then the subject of a keen 
and bitter attack, which was the expression of 
personal spite, and Kingsley felt that no other 
course was open to him but to resign his post. 
But the sage counsel of disinterested friends induced 
him to suspend his action for a year, if for no other 
reason than to prevent the triumph of those who 
had hoped thus to expel him from his position of 
influence. Kingsley, to his advantage, possessed 
the terrible calmness under attack which is a char- 
acteristic pf our nation ; for that awful British silence 
which has again and again awed our enemies is a 
potent moral force of no small value in controversy. 
And, like a wise man, he was too busy to waste his 
time in personal squabbles while so much remained 
for him to do. The Saviour's reply to persistent 
and hateful opposition was to continue His work, 



'GAINST POPES OF VARIOUS DEGREE. 8i 

and this is probably always tiie best course for His 
followers to take. It requires great self-restraint 
and strong patience to be able to do tliis, but it, 
after all, is the best answer to our enemies. 

A terrible home-sorrow fell upon Kingsley in 
this year of 1868, for then his eldest son left home 
in order to begin a new life amidst the prairies and 
tropical forests of South America. The breaking- 
up of a home is always acute anguish to parents 
who love their children, and Charles Kingsley 
felt bitterly the first break in his happy family 
circle. Of course families must be scattered, that 
thus the world may be influenced for right and for 
good, but the process is a very painful one to the 
parents. For just as a field is converted into a 
meadow by sporadic patches of grass, which grow 
out until they have changed the whole face of the 
country, so by the separate action of those who 
were once united in Christian families will the 
world be won for Christ and possessed by His 
Spirit. It is, of course, good for the world, but the 
benefit is, as all good things must be in this world, 
purchased at the cost of much pain. 



CHAPTER X. 

APPRECIATED TOO LATE; OR, TRUE 
AFTER ALL. 

" In His will is our peace." 

— Dante. 

" To meet, to know, to love, to part, 
Is the sad tale of many a human heart." 

— Coleridge. 

"He extremely resembled a rural George the Fourth, with an 
expansive, healthy, benevolent eagerness of sympathy in his face, 
and greatly resembled him as a type of British character." — Pe^- 

TERITA. 



CANON OF CHESTER — TAKING EOOT ONCE MORE — "ALL OVER 
BUT THE shouting!" — LAST WORDS— INTO NEW AND 
HIGHER SERVICE. 

The year 1869 saw Kingsley relinquisliiiig his 
duties as Professor at Cambridge. He left the 
University, having secured many valuable friend- 
ships during his brief course there, besides contri- 
buting not a little to the education of many young 
men whose after-life was richly influenced by his 
teaching. 

In December 1869 Mr. Kingsley with his 
daughter started for the West Indies, in accepta- 
tion of an invitation from his friend, Sir Arthur 

82 



APPRECIATED TOO LATE. S3 

Gordon, who was then Governor of Trinidad. 
"With him Kingsley spent the Christmas of 1869, 
and having at last realised his fondest hopes 
and gazed upon the fairyland of which he had 
dreamed from his childhood, he returned home 
refreshed and reinspired for the brief period of 
service that was yet before him. He returned also 
to new honour, for by Mr. Gladstone's influence he 
had been appointed Canon of Chester, and on the 
1st of May 1870 Canon Kingsley went up for his 
first three months' residence there. " Chester," 
says George Borrow, " is an ancient town with 
walls and gates, a prison called a castle, built 
on the site of an ancient keep, an unpretending- 
looking red sandstone cathedral, two or three 
handsome churches, several good streets and certain 
curious places called rows. The Chester row is a 
broad arched stone gallery running parallel with 
the street within the facades of the houses ; it is 
partly open on the side of the street, and just one 
storey above it. Within the rows, of which there 
are three or four, are shops, every shop being on 
that side which is farthest from the street. All 
the best shops in Chester are to be found in the 
rows. These rows, to which you ascend by stairs 
up narrow passages, were originally built for the 
security of the wares of the principal merchants 
against the Welsh. Should the mountaineers 
break into the town, as they frequently did, they 
might rifle some of the common shops, where their 



84 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

booty would be slight, but those which contained 
the more costly articles would be beyond their 
reach. For at the first alarm the doors of the pas- 
sages up which the stairs led would be closed, and 
all access to the upper streets cut off from the open 
arches, of which missiles of all kinds, kept ready for 
such occasions, could be discharged upon the in- 
truders, who would be soon glad to beat a retreat." 
Kingsley was soon at home in this ancient city, 
and its warm-hearted people speedily became as 
devotedly attached to him as the west country folk 
had been. During his residences in Chester, Canon 
Kingsley, as we must now call him, added to his 
official duties special efforts on behalf of the young 

men of the town. He started for their benefit a 

• 

class to which he taught his favourite science of 
Botany. This effort was crowned with singular 
success, and so much encouraged him that in the 
course of the following year (1871) he ventured to 
add a series of Greological lectures and studies to 
his Botanical lectures. And he dared to speak out 
to his young men upon the special perils to which 
vigorous immature youth is exposed ; his protest 
which was then publishedagainst gambling might 
be widely scattered with advantage to-day. It were 
to be wished that similar subjects would oftener 
engage the attention of the Christian Church, for 
they constitute the most serious perils to its existence. 
Kingsley's mind was eminently practical, and that 
in religion as well as in other things. This was 



APPRECIATED TOO LATE. 85 

seen in the effect wliicli was produced upon him 
by the serious illness of the Prince of Wales. For 
some days the fever seemed as if it must prove 
fatal, and Kingsley shared to the utmost the na- 
tional anxiety which was felt as the life of the 
Prince hovered in the balance. As soon as Kingsley 
learned that the Prince was out of danger, he took 
care to point out how preventible such diseases were, 
if only the rules of health were observed. In a 
thanksgiving sermon which, as one of the Koyal 
chaplains. Canon Kingsley preached at the Chapel- 
Royal, London, he pressed those views upon his 
audience. For Kingsley believed in the sacredness 
of life, and in the duty which lies upon every one 
to preserve it as long as may be. 

He himself had need of a faithful counsellor to 
check him in his too arduous efforts, for in 1872 
symptoms of paralysis appeared as a result of over- 
work. It has been said that in a certain northern 
city most men who have succeeded in obtaining a 
competence die early from lack of definite and use- 
ful employment. It is to be feared, however, that 
few are thus stricken down when compared . with 
the multitudes who are worn out by the fearful 
pace at which they must live. With a great num- 
ber of persons, existence is a slow death in order to 
secure the means which are required to live, and 
nature rings her alarm-bells in vain. Kingsley 
might have prolonged his life had he been con- 
tent to vegetate for a few years, but, after all, long 



86 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

life is by no means the highest nor even an unmixed 
good. Many a man survives his reputation or his 
power to benefit others, who, had he died before 
this torpor came upon him, would have been canon- 
ised as a martyr and a hero. Yet, on the other 
handj it may be questioned if a man has a right by 
excessive labour to deprive his family of the comfort 
of his presence, for upon those who are left behind 
falls the bitterness of grief when a good man goes 
to his rest. 

With Canon Kingsley the end of his life was 
rapidly drawing near, although he knew it not. 
One of Frith's pictures is entitled, '' All over but 
the shouting," which alsp was true in this case. 
But just as earthly things were slipping from his 
grasp, honour came to Kingsley when it was too 
late for him to enjoy or to employ it with ad- 
vantage. In the year 1873 Kingsley was appointed 
Canon of Westminster, an honour which relieved 
him from pecuniary anxieties, and also gratified 
him intensely. Dean Stanley was then at the 
Deanery, and very heartily he welcomed his father's 
friend to Westminster. For two years only Kings- 
ley enjoyed the privileges which the new position 
afforded to him for fulfilling his life-work, and 
then he passed beyond the veil. Monod said that 
upon his tombstone he should like to have the 
words written, " Here endeth the first lesson." 
Kingsley 's first lesson ended in the year iS^S- 

On the 29th of November 1874 Canon Kingsley 



APPRECIATED TOO LATE. 87 

preached in Westminster Abbey, and the next day- 
he took a slight chill. He disregarded this, and 
with his wife he returned home to Eversley. There 
the greatest sorrow which can befall a mortal man 
threatened him, for it seemed as if his wife must be 
taken from him. He did his utmost to console and 
to support her for the terrible struggle which every 
one dreads, without for a moment dreaming that he 
himself must pass through the dark valley first and 
alone. He was too much alarmed and distressed 
at the magnitude of the threatened calamity to 
think of himself, and he was consequently some- 
what careless of his personal comfort. The cold 
now settled upon him, and it speedily developed 
into pneumonia. On the morning of the 23 rd of 
January 1875 he passed away, and so gentle was 
the parting that the watchers beside his bed knew 
not the exact moment when he began to live in 
the truest sense. Then, as is often the case, men 
began to appreciate him, and his burial was a 
national tribute to his worth and value. He was 
buried, at his own express wish, in the churchyard 
at Eversley. " The churchyard," says a recent 
writer, " is entered through a picturesque wych- 
gate, and the short approach is by an avenue 
of cypresses. In a corner of this crowded and 
sequestered God's acre, a monument is placed over 
the grave of Charles Kingsley. The name and 
date of his death, January 23, 1875, are carved 
upon the pedestal, and around the head of the 



88 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

cross are the words, "God is Love." The grave 
is close to the boundary-wall, and is overshadowed 
by one of the outlying branches of a venerable Scotch 
fir in the Rectory grounds, which are separated 
from the churchyard by a low iron railing." 



CHAPTER XI. 

DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 

" If man be only born to die, 

Whence this inheritance of hope ? 
Wherefore to him alone were lent 

E/iches that never can be spent ? 
Enough, not more, to all the rest, 

Tor life and happiness was given ; 
To man, mysteriously unblest, 

Too much for any state but heaven." 

— MONTGOMEKT. 

" The absence of years has only served to deepen in me the con- 
viction that no gift can be more valuable than the recollection and 
the inspiration of a great character working on our own. I hope 
that you may all experience this at some time of your life, as I 
have done." — Dean Stanley. 



HEEO-WOESHIP— GOOD IN THE WOEST AND BAD IN THE BEST 
OF MEN— KINGSLEY'S FAULTS OF DEFECT CHIEFLY — HIS 
INFLUENCE LIKELY TO LAST. 

It is scarcely possible for any one to study tlie 
life and works of sucli a man as Charles Kingsley 
without incurring, during the reading, a danger of 
something that is very much like that of hero- 
worship. This is even true of many who are not 
good men, because we can discover in the very 
worst of men traces of good, which may perhaps 



90 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

humiliate us to find how much superior to our- 
selves in some things men whom we condemn and 
despise have been. This is one of the benefits of 
biography, and this it is which makes it so prac- 
tically useful to all men who will but use it wisely. 
The lives of evil men are thus not only beacons to 
warn us from doing wrong, but they are also examples 
to shame us from some faults that they escaped. 
With great and good men, on the other hand, it 
may be disappointing, but it is also assuring to us, 
when we discover that they were not perfect, but that, 
on the contrary, they blundered as we may do. It 
is not, therefore, in any captious spirit that we 
should seek to see wherein they erred, in order not 
only that we may not follow them in wrong-doing, 
but that we may, in spite of our own errors, be 
inspired to do in our lives what they did upon a 
larger scale in theirs. 

Most men are easily divisible into classes ; and 
Christian teachers are associated into parties which 
are sharply defined. Canon Kingsley was, however, 
a class by himself, and we cannot assign to him a 
position within any recognised party lines. He was 
certainly not an Evangelical, although traces of his 
early training lingered, perhaps unconsciously, in 
him. His mental architecture and his likings for 
sport unfitted him for the position of a profound 
theologian. He also lacked altogether the high 
qualities which Hooker and other great divines 
possessed. Yet Kingsley's influence is far greater 



DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 91 

tlian even Hooker himself upon tlie active religious 
thought of our time. For Englishmen do not so 
much care for doctrinal controversies as for practi- 
cal life, and, j ast because he exposed real evils and 
attempted to grapple with present-day sins, Kingsley 
was popular. His faults as a theologian were indeed 
rather in defect than in excess ; for while he evidently 
held the vicarious atonement of our Lord, he un- 
wisely did not assign to it the prominence which it V 
holds in the Scriptures. Kingsley followed Maurice 
almost slavishly, and that perhaps accounts for his 
mental deficiencies. And upon the future-life ques- 
tion Kingsley took up a position which he undoubt- 
edly believed to be true, and imagined, as those who 
hold similar views often do, that declamation and 
invective can prove that which requires argument. 
The question is not to be settled by an appeal to 
human feelings, for human feelings, after all, must 
be adjusted to Divine facts. Whatever God does 
must be right, and to express one's opinions in the 
tone that Kingsley and George Macdonald have 
sometimes employed, amounts to constructive blas- 
phemy. 

Kingsley as a religious teacher is the exponent 
of strong common-sense, and manliness, which dis- 
regards drapery, and realises the fact that the Gospel 
is a living message for to-day. Latimer two hundred 
years ago thus expressed this truth in his famous 
sermon on " The Plough." " Christ is a continual 
sacrifice in effect, fruit, operation, and virtue ; as 



92 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

tliougli He had from the beginning of the world, and 
continually should to the world's end, hang still on 
the cross ; and He is as fresh hanging on the 
cross now to them that believe and trust in Him 
as He was fifteen hundred years ago, when He was 
crucified." The Evangelical party has also too much 
left the care for the present life to Secularists, and 
here Kingsley corrected them. It is, indeed, as 
a social reformer, and an advocate for the helpless 
and friendless, that Kingsley was chiefly eminent. 
He helped to fight the battle of the Chartists, of 
the victims of our vicious trade system, of the 
agricultural labourers, and of others who had no 
other friend. His books are not only a picture of 
the times which they represent, but they are ex- 
pressions of the threatening evils which muttered 
and rumbled below the surface of society, and in 
some measure do so still. 

But, above all things, Kingsley was a man of 
God ; and even when we differ from him, it is with a 
painful sense of how inferior we are to him in some 
things that are especially Christian traits of character. 
His life was full of holy impulses to earnest activity, 
and therefore he may be accounted as pre-eminently 
a man with a mission. And we all have a similar 
trust committed into our charge for which, indeed, 
we shall give an account — we are entrusted with 
much of the comfort and the power to serve of 
our brethren. Only when we rise to a lofty con- 
ception of our powers and seek God's help to enable 



DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 93 

us to use tliem riglitly can we win the high praise 
that, like Kingsley, we have served our generation. 
As a delineator of character we must assign a 
very high place to Kingsley. His conceptions of 
the ideal life were very pure and lofty, and he was 
careful to maintain his own standard all throudi 

O 

his writings. In his books it is true that there 
are some facts and some characters which shock 
and offend the susceptibilities of nervous Christian 
people. But these things are to be found in the 
world in which we live, and similar imperfections 
may be seen in those who perhaps live next door to 
us. The eye to see these things is not possessed by 
all men ; and one feels that the artist vision is a part 
of a novelist's equipment. " I do not see these 
things in Nature," said a lady to Turner the artist ; 
and he replied, " No, Madam. ; don't you wish that 
you could see them ? " The power of seeing is not 
possessed by all persons, for only the prophet is de- 
scribed as one " who has had his eyes opened." The 
gift has its penalty, it is true, for there is much that 
pains in a keen inspection both of life and of those 
who live it around us. Kingsley saw our glorious 
constitution, and those who suffered under it, and 
saw, too, that they were men of flesh and blood, who 
felt keenly the wrongs that were inflicted upon them. 
To him " the people " were so many reproductions of 
himself, with power to love, to hate, to suffer, and to 
know God. He dared to associate with infidels and 
political agitators, and he found that these men had 



94 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

some reason for complaint, for both the Church and 
the Government had ill-used them. It required 
some courage for a clergyman to do as Kingsley 
did ; nowadays such conduct would win praise 
rather than the reverse, but the authorities thought 
otherwise when Kingsley set himself to understand 
the evils that he hoped to lessen. That he did see 
them, and accurately portray them, we are assured 
by those who knew the evil dens, the foulness of 
which he exposed, and the consequent suffering for 
which he sought a remedy. 

Since Kingsley began his work a social revolu- 
tion has indeed been wrought in England, and he 
has been not the least of the workers who have 
secured victory. 

Upon the whole, it seems to us that the true 
work of Kingsley was accomplished by means of his 
novels, which, since their recent reissue in a popular 
form, have been sold by millions. They, and not the 
sermons, are being read in all quarters, and their 
opinions are being assimilated by many who say little 
about them, and thus " he being dead, yet speaketh." 

It may seem to be superfluous to enumerate 
them, but the publishers were certainly wise in 
placing " Westward Ho ! " at the head of their list. 
Kingsley intensely hated the Jesuits, as indeed 
every thoughtful patriot must do, and he spared no 
scorn in order that he might warn his readers 
af^ainst their seductions. 

" Admit the simoom if you will," says Dr. Wylie 



DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 95 

in his sketch of the Jesuits. " As it sweeps along 
over our land, it will strip tree and field, and lay 
their blossoms in the dust ; but the next spring 
will restore their perished honours. Admit the 
plague if you will. It will make many a corpse, it 
will dig many a grave, and call forth on the high- 
way the mournful pomp of many a funeral proces- 
sion ; but a few years will pass, and again the 
merry laugh of boyhood and girlhood will be heard 
on our streets, and new forms, stately and stalwart, 
will arise to fight our battles and plough our fields 
and carry on the business of life. But let the 
Jesuit enter, and it will be the dread spectacle seen 
by the apocalyptist when he beheld and, ' Lo, a pale 
horse, and he that sat on him was Death, ^and Hell 
followed with him/ It is not the bodies of livincr 
men merely that the Jesuits will trample into the 
grave. It is the manhood, the virtue, the patriotism, 
the piety, of the land which he will waste and 
trample down. All that is lovely, and noble, and 
good, will wither and die under the sirocco breath of 
Jesuitism." 

These words are not the utterance of a tyro, but 
of a man who may almost claim to be a specialist 
upon this subject, and they are therefore entitled to 
the most profound respect. Kingsley felt as Dr. 
Wylie does, and he wove his teaching into a tale in 
which the effects of Jesuit teaching? and the natural 
results of Eomanism are vividly shown. It is true 
that at present there is terrible apathy in England 



96 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

upon these matters. Mr. Stead is smitten with 
intense affection for the Papacy and Cardinal Man- 
ning, and those who do not agree with him regard the 
Papacy as they do the Mormons or the believers in 
the Identity of the English nation with the Lost 
Ten Tribes of Israel. It will require, we fear, some 
signal catastrophe, perhaps a revival of persecution, 
to prove to the present generation that the Papacy 
is unchanged, and is as much a menace to individual 
piety and national greatness as it ever was. 

It may be objected that such important truths 
should not have been committed to a novel, but that 
they required a more dignified vehicle. Yet no one 
complains of the method by which a patient is 
cured, or a child enticed away from the tiger's lair ; 
so long as the peril is averted and the people are 
saved, the method may be safely left to the doer's 
own judgment. It may be given to one to accom- 
plish his life-purpose by 

" Mighty deeds and great," 

while another may employ ornaments of rhyme ; 
Kingsley chose the romance. 

Scattered up and down the book there are exqui- 
site sentences that embody sentiments which are as 
important to-day as they were at the time that they 
were first penned. Por example, upon one page of 
" Westward Ho ! " we find these noble sentences : — 

*' ' The ^prerogative of a man is to he bold against 
himself,' 



DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 97 

" ' How, sir ? ' 

*' ' To conquer our own fancies, Amyas, and our oiun 
lusts, or our ambition, in the sacred name of chUy ; 
this it is to be truly brave and truly strong, for he 
who cannot rule himself, how can he rule his creed 
and his fortunes ? ' " 

He describes also a man "who wanted but one 
step to greatness^ and that was this, that in his hurry 
to rule all the world he forgot to ride himself." 

The next passage that we select from the same 
book supplies the keynote of Kingsley's teaching : — 

" ' I have tried to hint to you two opposite sorts 
of men. The one trying to be good with all his 
might and main, according to certain approved 
methods and rules which he has got by heart, and, 
like a weak oarsman, feeling and fingering his spi- 
ritual muscles over all day, to see if they are grow- 
ing. The other, not even knowing whether he is 
good or not, but just doing the right thing without 
thinking about it, as simply as a little child, because 
the Spirit of God is with him. If you cannot see 
the great gulf fixed between the two, I trust that 
you wdll discover it some day.' '' 

Which sentence might stand as a text for all 
Kingsley's novels. In each there is exhibited the 
contrast between the unconscious piety of the man 
who is often despised as an outsider and a publican, 
and the obtrusive self-conscious religion of the man 
who wearies himself and others about self-inspec- 
tion and puerile trivialities instead of striving to do 

G 



98 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

his duty through the strength that comes through 
faith in Christ. " Westward Ho ! " abounds in 
passages that might be read and quoted with ad- 
vantage oftener than they are. For example, there 
is an awful amount of truth in the sarcastical sen- 
tences : " * Go to, lad ! Slander thy equals, envy thy 
betters, pray for an eye which sees spots in every 
sun, and for a vulture's nose to scent carrion in 
every rose-bed. If thy friend win a battle, show 
that he has needlessly thrown away his men ; if he 
lose one, hint that he sold it ; if he rise to a great 
place, argue favour; if he lose it, argue Divine 
justice. Believe nothing, hope nothing, but endure 
all things, even to kicking, if aught may be got 
thereby; so shalt thou be clothed in purple and 
fine linen, and sit in kings' palaces, and fare sump- 
tuously every day.' " There are, alas ! many who 
can say with Salterne : " ' I am a man who has all 
his life tried the crooked road first, and found the 
straight one safer after all.' " 

Kingsley's own conception of his office he has 
depicted in graphic words thus : — 

" ' No wonder that young men, as the parsons com- 
plain so loudly, will not listen to the Gospel while 
it is presented to them by men on whom they can- 
not but look down ; a set of soft-headed fellows 
who cannot dig and are ashamed to beg ; and, as my 
brother has it, must be parsons before they are men.' 

" ' Ay,' said Frank ; ' and even though we may 
excuse that in Popish priests and friars, who are 



DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. 99 

vowed not to be men, and get their bread shame- 
fully and rascally by telling sinners who owe a 
hundred measures to sit down quickly and take 
their bill and write fifty ; yet for a priest of the 
Church of England (whose business it is not merely 
to smuggle sinful souls up the backstairs into heaven, 
but to make men good Christians by making them 
good men, good gentlemen, and good Englishmen) 
to show the white feather in the hour of need, is to 
unpreach in one minute all that he had been preach- 
in" his life lonsj.' " 

In our judgment the book is wholly good, and 
will impart vigour and act as a tonic to any young 
man who will read it through once or twice thought- 
fully and carefully, not only in order to obtain amuse- 
ment from it, but also in order to allow its iron and 
steel to impregnate his mind and soul. !N"ext to 
" Tom Brown's Schooldays," which it naturally much 
resembles, there is no manlier book in our language, 
and its bracing spirit is contagious and beneficial, 
as all who have read it must confess. 

Next in importance as a moral force we should 
place " Alton Locke," which, if read side by side with 
Thomas Cooper's life, will be felt by all to be a truth- 
ful picture — perhaps a portrait. It is true that there 
are some passages which, if taken from their con- 
nection, are untrue in fact, but the book as a whole 
is one which should and will enlarge the heart, and 
dispose it to see brethren and friends where perhaps 
it previously only saw foes. 



loo MEN WITH A MISSION. 

As a work of art, " Hypatia " is generally con- 
sidered the best of all Kingsley's works, but we have 
never been able to kindle under it as we have 
always done under " Westward Ho ! " For one 
thing, the teachings of the book upon the after-life 
are, we believe, unscriptural ; an d for another thing 
we have no great admiration of Arsenius nor even 
for Cyril. 

" Two Years Ago " is a work of another character, 
and it contains some passages that Kingsley never 
surpassed. The character of Tom Thurnall resem- 
bles Kingsley in many points ; he is, indeed, the 
nineteenth century Esau. Eor Esau does not hunt 
much now, but he still glories in his strength, and 
does not think much about G-od or the life to come. 
He knows nothing about them ; he does not pray, 
nor feel any desire to do so, because he is absorbed 
in the practical duties of life. The manner in which 
Kingsley deals with this type of character is splen- 
did ; we are charmed as Tom Thurnall at last comes 
to feel his defect and to seek God. 

We hear that the vivid and awful description of 
the night that Vavasour spent upon Snowdon led 
to the conversion of a wanderer who had lost his 
way through life, and we do not wonder at it, for 
the word-painting is awful and grand, resembling, 
indeed, one of Martin's pictures. 

With " Hereward the Wake " we confess that we 
find no sympathy whatever. The tale is a sad one, 
and we fancy that the topic was not so congenial 



DEAD, BUT YET SPEAKING. loi 

to Kingsley as were the subjects of his previous 
stories. That it is readable, and will do good, we 
can quite believe, for we cannot imagine that 
Kingsley could write anything that would not be 
interesting and beneficial in some degree, but it 
certainly is far below " Westward Ho ! " or even 
" Alton Locke," in diction, and in its possession of 
that subtle somewhat that we may define as the 
soul of a book. 

Of his other works no mention need be made 
here, for long after his essays and sermons cease 
to be read, Kjngsley's novels will be read and 
studied. Eor human life is much the same in^ 
every age, and its sujfferings are essentially the same, 
as also the remedies for its misery are identical for/ 
all. Wesley in his journals tells us about a revenue 
officer who while dying gasped out feebly, " I — want 
— Cheist." This is the real want of all men, and" 
of the world at large ; they — want — Christ ; and it 
is the business of all who love Christ to bring Him 
into living contact with the dying seeking myriads. 
We believe that, in his own way, Kingsley did bring 
Christ to men, and that because of this his novels 
will live and exert a beneficial influence for years to 
come. As to whether he might not have accom- 
plished more had he not held certain beliefs that 
he felt bound to publish, is quite another question ; 
let us remember that the coxswain of the lifeboat 
who has expended his energies in bringing some of 
the shipwrecked safely to shore cannot very well be 



I02 MEN WITH A MISSION. 

censured because others who stood upon the shore 
suppose that he might have rescued more. 

Dean Stanley, who understood and consequently 
loved Kingsley, in the funeral sermon that he 
preached for his friend at Westminster Abbey 
speaks thus of his character : " I would fain recall 
some of those higher strains which, amid manifold 
imperfections acknowledged by none more freely 
than himself, placed him unquestionably among the 
conspicuous teachers of his age, and gave to his 
voice the power of reaching souls to which other 
preachers and teachers addressed themselves in 
vain. . . .^e was what he was, not by virtue of 
his office, but by virtue of what God made him in 
himself • • • He was sent by Providence, as it 
were, tar off to the Gentiles — far off, not to other 
lands or other races of mankind, but far off from 
the usual sphere of minister or priest, to ' fresh 
woods and pastures new,' to find fresh worlds of 
thought and wild tracts of character in which he 
found a response for himself because he gave a re- 
sponse to them. . . . Scholar, poet, novelist, he 
yet felt himself to be, with all and before all, a 
spiritual teacher and guide. . . . Amidst all the 
wavering inconstancy of our time, he called upon 
men of his generation, with a steadfastness and 
assured conviction that of itself steadied and re- 
assured the minds of those for whom he spoke, to 
stand fast in the faith." 



DEADy BUT YET SPEAKING. 103 

Nothing need be added to these noble words, 
except to express a wish that it may be the testi- 
mony of those who come after us that our influence 
upon them has been what Kingsley's influence has 
been to many, wholly for good. 

"Life is a serious thing," says the German 
Schiller ; a conviction of its intense seriousness 
should compel us to right and worthy efibrts to 
employ it for the highest purposes. " I cannot do 
without the man Christ Jesus," was Kingsley's 
heartfelt confession, and in the faith and convic- 
tion that prompted it are the secret of his manliness 
and usefulness. This faith in Christ Jesus counter- 
acted his errors, strengthened his heart, and made 
him one of the successful workers in the world. 

** They who would he something more 
Than they who feast and laugh and die will hear 
The voice of duty as the note of war, 
Nerving their spirits to great enterprise, 
And knitting every sinew for the charge. 
Who do, and who have done, 
All that has ever aided man to free 
Himself imperfectly from grosser self, 
And made his seeing pure ; — such souls sublime 
Will never want for blessed joy in work, 
Working for Duty, which can never die." 

— WOOLNER. 
THE END. 



PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
EDINBURGH AND LONDON. , 



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